


Rite of Spring

by PartlyCloudySkies



Category: Night In The Woods (Video Game)
Genre: Crimes? Crimes, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 07:17:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 45,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10552296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PartlyCloudySkies/pseuds/PartlyCloudySkies
Summary: That spring when Gregg and Angus left for Bright Harbor and Mae started a fire in the middle of town.





	1. I Still Taste Tacos

Mae stood in a wide fighter’s stance, holding a stick of beef jerky at Gregg like it was a weapon. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Give back my Greggory.”

Behind the cash register, Gregg leaned against the counter and smiled. “Dude, it’s totally me.”

“Wrong! You’re an impostor. Like, an alien engineered to look like Gregg to infiltrate our society and steal our damn gizzards.”

“No alien technology can replicate this hotness,” Gregg said. He motioned at his face with one hand.

Mae’s eyes narrowed further. “True. Maybe you’re possessed by a wandering spirit. Or —”

The entrance to the Snack Falcon chimed behind her. Mae looked over her shoulder where a women was walking in, surveying the scene and looking uncertain.

“Keep back, citizen,” said Mae. “This person is not who he seems. He’s an agent of evil forces looking to destabilize our American way of life.”

“Dude come _on_ ,” said Gregg.

She whirled and jabbed the beef jerky at him. “You stay where you are!”

The woman looked from Mae to Gregg and then Mae again with an expression of complete, utter weariness. “I just need a 24-pack of Fiascola,” she said. “For my son’s 12th birthday party. Why is this happening to me?”

Mae scanned the shelves and darted her free hand out to hoist up a carton of Fiascola. She dropped it into the surprised woman’s arms. “There. Now go. Save yourself. I’ll cover your escape.”

“I haven’t paid —”

“Go!”

Her eyes darting every which way and her feet slowly backing her towards the exit, the woman pivoted on her heels and walked out of the store.

“Dude!” said Gregg.

“Ha! The Gregg I know wouldn’t give a crap if someone stole from this store!”

“I mean, yeah, if it’s someone I’m cool with. That was like, a stranger who I don’t care about. She’ll live out the rest of her days remembering this and not knowing what the hell was going on.”

“Whoa,” said Mae. “When you put it like that, it sounds kind of kick ass.”

“Yeah dude, she’s gonna like, be on her death bed and the last thing she’ll think about is the time she walked out of a Snack Falcon with free soda because of a crazy person.”

“I’m not crazy!” said Mae. “You’re the crazy one!”

“All I said was maybe you could take over at the Snalcon after I leave!”

“Wow lemme just unpack the layers of crazy in that sentence there. I’m gonna need major excavation tools. These layers run deep.”

“It’s not crazy, it’s perfect. I’m leaving soon. This place is gonna need a new warm body. You need a new job. It makes so much sense it actually physically hurts me that I haven’t thought of it before. Looking at my face physically hurts you.”

“Looking at your _face_ physically — goddammit!!!”

“Boom, get destroyed idiot.”

Mae dropped her arms and let the beef jerky roll to the floor. She had lost the fight. “I cannot work in the Snack Falcon.”

“You totally utterly can,” said Gregg. “If I can do it I know you can.”

“I’d be a total mess. This place would be a total mess.”

“Listen, I steal. I let other people steal. I break shit, like, on the daily. I close and leave whenever I feel like it. And I still haven’t gotten fired! If you can manage to do less damage to this place than I have, then you’re already overqualified for the job.”

“Oh my god, you’re actually serious about this.”

“Uh, yeah dude. I’m like, a serious person now. With responsibilities.”

“Noooo.” Mae put her hands to her throat as if drowning.

“A proper upstanding member of society.”

“Noooo.” She reached up towards the sky with one hand.

“I got a credit score and everything!”

Mae collapsed onto the ground. “Noooo shit no this is so depressing stop talking.”

“How do you think I feel? Sometimes I think ‘why can’t I just live in the woods like a wildman’ and it takes so long to remember why I shouldn’t.”

Mae threw her arms up. “Wildmen need no credit scores!”

“They eat pine cones and when they want to watch television they start a bonfire and make shadow puppets.” Gregg said.

“If you say ‘credit score’ to a wildman he will think you’re challenging him for dominance and, like, pee on you.”

“Gross dude. That’s the other reason I can’t do it.”

“I know the realllll reason Greggory,” said Mae.

“What?”

“You’re in _looooooove_.”

“Dude.”

“With _Angussssss_.”

Gregg sighed. “I can’t deny it, he’s making a respectable man outta me.”

Mae stood up and dusted herself off. “Is that what you tell yourself to get in here everyday?”

“Totally. I’m not even lying. Me, Angus, Bright Harbor. It’s been going through my head like a chant.”

“Heh. A Greggorian chant.”

“Nice.”

“Maybe I need a chant.” Mae looked up at the harsh flickering halogen lights.

“Oh yeah!” said Gregg. “Something that will get you motivated and shit!”

Mae collapsed onto the counter opposite of Gregg, her faced mashed against the surface. She looked up at him. “Man, I don’t even know.”

“Okay but seriously there is probably like a million E.coli things on that counter so…”

“Gross!” Mae jerked back up. “I feel like I don’t have many wants.”

“You live with your parents Mae. You must want something more than that.”

“I dunno,” she said. “Like, I want everyone to be happy. And safe. And I want people to be proud of being themselves. And I want every day to mean something. And I want folks to have a moment where they can like, look around themselves and realize that even though there’s so much bullshit in life there’s still something amazing about just being able to be in a place and… and… and…”

“Maybe that’s a bit too big picture for a chant,” said Gregg.

“Aaaugh.” Mae pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Why is this hard? It sucks!”

“We’ve still got time before I leave,” said Gregg. “Just think about it, okay?”

“Somebody will definitely get hired before then,” said Mae.

“Nah. I’ve been holding onto every application I get, making sure Christine doesn’t see ‘em.”

Mae looked at Gregg. “Damn. That’s… you’re doing this terrible thing for me?”

“Totally. Nepotism isn’t just for rich and powerful people anymore.”

“You da best, brah.” She gave him a thumbs up.

“Word. The Falcon is yours by birthright. It was foretold in legends. Shit’s all Arthurian.”

“Oh geez, my head’s all in a jumble now.”

“You got time to think about it.”

“When are you and Angus leaving?”

“Day after the annual spring church pretzel giveaway. I ain’t missing out on those church pretzels. Not this year not any year. With that mustard? My god, Mae.”

“Dude that’s so soon.” That’s not time. That’s not time _at all_. That’s nothing. Mae resisted the urge to… to something. To knock a rack over. To sweep an entire shelf of food onto the floor. To… something. _Anything._ She forced herself to stay at the counter.

“Dude I know.” Gregg was excited. Mae could see the excitement in his eyes. He was smiling. It made her want to collapse into a tiny black hole.

“I’m gonna miss the heck out of you dudes,” she said in a small voice.

“You’re gonna be the dudemisser.”

“Yeah. That’s. Gonna be me.” Mae let out a hitching breath then pushed away from the counter, standing straight. “I’m… gonna cruise. Got important business. At places.” She backed up towards the doors and they slid apart with a chime. “The places I gotta be. Which is so many places. So many.”

“Ha ha. Okay, yeah. Remember band practice later,” Gregg called from the counter.

As she walked backwards out the store Mae did the double gun finger point, the universal gesture of all cool dudes who totally have everything on lock and are without a care in the world. “Ha ha, yeah bro.”

It was only after she wheeled around on one heel, faced herself down the road with a wide-eyed glassy expression, then reached the end of the Snack Falcon that she started shaking. She turned the corner and ran around to the back and pressed her forehead against the rough brick of the convenience store.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid.” She said, her eyes screwed shut. “Stupid… stupid… stupid… aaaaaugh.”

In the autumn she had made a promise in the dark. She had promised that she would let herself feel angry. To let herself hope. To let herself hurt when she lost. Well, now it was happening. She was losing and she was hurting and turns out that it sucks! It sucked so much and she had no idea how to handle it. Why weren’t there instruction books to go with emotions? There should be an instruction book to go with emotions. They’d give it to you as soon as you’re born. The doctor would attach a note to it that reads “hey, you’re still too young and stupid to read this, but you’ll need it someday because this shit will wreck your life and there’s not a lot anyone can do about it. Sorry.”

The fact that nobody has done this yet could explain a lot about the world’s troubles, Mae thought.

A clamor crowded her mind. Not even thoughts or ideas. Just… noise. Sea foam. Firewood crackle. Dead television. It was like trying to push too much stuff through a thing that wasn’t designed to handle it. Like that time in 10th grade when she put her teacher’s ten-page handout into the garbage disposal. Dad was not happy that day. She wanted to round up the static filling her head. Put them behind electrified barbed wire fences. Push them off a cliff. Set them on fire. Instead she had her head against a brick wall and called herself stupid. Which wasn’t working so hot.

“Come on, Borowski,” she said to herself. “There is, like, a significant chance Gregg’s gonna come out to the back to goof off and then he’s gonna see you being all weird and then where will you be? Get. A. Grip.” She pressed her head into the brick until it hurt, and that kind of helped.

Heaving a sigh she stood up straight and found her way back to the sidewalk. Head still buzzing, Mae tottered zombie-like down Centre Avenue. People were walking. Cars jostled over potholes. The sun was bright. It all seemed wrong. It all seemed normal. There should be gray clouds smothering the sky. People should look low and sullen and the air shouldn’t smell like flowers and fresh life and meadows blooming on the sides of the mountains that surrounded them. Gregg and Angus were leaving. Two fixtures in her life. The world shouldn’t act so damn cheerful about it. Across the street, she watched someone smile and wished earnestly for a sinkhole to open underneath them.

She was so intent on her ill-wishes that she did not notice when she collided with someone.

“Oof!” they said. Mae reeled back and refocused her attention. She saw a brown sweater vest. Then the person wearing it.

“Oh. Sorry, Mr. Chazokov.”

Her former teacher looked down at her with a smile. “I believe I shall survive. I have been trying to get your attention. You looked so preoccupied.”

Mae looked to the side and frowned. “Oh. Sorry,” she repeated. “Kinda had my head all over the place.”

“Why so upset? it is a beautiful day, eh?”

Resisting an eye roll, Mae wrestled a neutral expression onto her face. “Sure I guess. How’s Spring Break treating you?”

“It is a myth that teachers have a vacation during this time. We are still very busy.”

“I don’t know how you even deal with kids like me on a daily basis and you don’t even get our breaks? That sucks.”

“Well, spring is still nice.” 

“Yeah. Spring. Everything is changing. Springtime and all.” She waved her hands in the air. “Whoop-dee-doo.”

“Hm. That is true. Spring is change.”

“Well spring sucks. Autumn is so much better.”

“Autumn is also change,” said Mr. Chazokov. “The leaves change.”

She didn’t want a conversation, but Mae also didn’t want anyone impugning autumn’s honor. This outrage needed answering. “Maaaaaan, okay. But at least autumn has, like, Halloween and haunted houses and mazes and skeletons. Spring is all… gross pollen and short nights and bugs.”

“Bugs?”

“Bugs. Nothing cool or scary about bugs.”

“Hm. Bugs. Yes, bugs are a thing. So autumn is scarier than spring, eh?”

“Oh dude you know it. Nobody dresses up as a vampire for spring. It’s like, not a contest.”

“Beh heh.” Without even thinking of it, the two got out of the way of foot traffic and into the shadow of the Party Barn. “Well do not be so quick to count out spring. You know, there’s lots of stories of the olden days that make spring seem like the real horror show.”

“Oh for real? I don’t know dude, my grandpa was like, the pro of these types of stories and he didn’t mention no spring.”

“Beh heh heh, perhaps he thought they were too scary for little Mae.”

Oh it was completely _on_. Her earlier gloom evaporated in the furnace of her indignation. “You have just thrown down the gauntlet Mr. Chazokov. Honor must be satisfied!”

He did not hesitate. “There cannot be a spring without a winter, Mae. Think about it. You are of a little village in the clutches of winter. The night falls too quickly, the fields are smothered by snow. The food stores, they shrink. All the animals have vanished in the woods. And all around you is the cold, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Yes. To you, it is the end of the world. Not a fiery cataclysm, not a sundering of the earth beneath you. But a choking. A guttering of the light. A numbness that seeps through your skin and into your bones until nothing is left to feel. It is the world lost in a blanket of featureless white like static on a tv screen, yes?”

“Wow you sure are talking up winter and not spring at all.”

“Patience, patience. I was just getting to spring. Spring is the exact opposite. It is long day and short nights, green fields and new plants and the animals they have their children in spring. But what a difference between the two seasons that are right next to each other! If you are a villager without knowledge of the sun and the tilt of the world, it is mystifying! Surely there must be some great power at play. Some god that must be thanked and appeased. After all, if this god is not happy then who is to say they will save your village from winter in the next cycle? And are there not stories of villages that are not saved? You see them in the springtime, when the paths are clear and trade is possible again. They are empty villages where the food stores have run out and the houses are silent and those that explore them tell dark stories of cannibalism. Of people who must do the unthinkable to survive!”

“Oh man, I’m so on board with this.”

“So the gods who end the winter and bring the spring must be appeased!”

“Bring the spring!”

“Just so! Have you heard, perhaps, the story of Tolb?”

“I have not. Who is Tolb?”

“The first king of spring! Back in the olden days, they tell of a village for whom winter had gone too long and starvation was setting in. They were desperate and soon they would eat their own. But before they did that, the village elders hit upon the idea that they must feed the god of spring. They drew lots, and the one who drew short was Tolb. And he was killed. Burned to death, so that the fire might defeat the snow.”

“Oh man, wasn’t he a king?”

“I think that was a title they give him to maybe not feel bad for burning him alive.”

“Like ‘hey sucks we gonna kill you, but we’ll call you king so that’s cool.’ Seems kind of a raw deal. I thought kings were like, powerful.”

“Ah, much of royalty is said to be chosen by god, yes? And isn’t this just another kind of choosing? By a god?”

Mae made a thoughtful noise.

“So anyway,” Mr. Chazokov resumed. “they kill king Tolb and do you know what happens the next day? The warm rains of spring come. It washes away the snow. It renews the fields and rouses the animals. The world is saved from the eternal cold.”

“And they decide it’s because of Tolb, not because weather is just like that sometimes.”

“You know how people are, Mae. We’re —”

“Pattern-finders.”

“Well put. And this pattern was not lost on the village. Or neighboring villages, when they hear of the story. The sacrifice of Tolb becomes the talk of the year. And so when the next winter comes, the preparations are made. A new Tolb is chosen. And this time, he is treated as a proper king. He is given the best food. He is given much wine. He is pampered and kept warm, yes? For what kind of sacrifice that is cold and wretched would be suitable for a god? None! He is wanting for nothing and lives the winter like a king. But once all are ready for spring to return again, they take him into the woods. Where a post has been stuck into the ground and surrounded by tinder.”

“That is rad. But wouldn’t he, like, fight back? I think I would. I definitely would.”

Mr. Chazokov shrugged. “Perhaps he did, perhaps he did not. The stories, they don’t say. They do say it happens every year. It is a death that celebrates life, yes? For the sacrifice is meant to bring renewal. You cannot have spring without it.”

“Oh man, Mr. Chazokov. Where was this talk about sacrifices and cannibalism and stuff when I was your student? I most absolutely would have paid more attention if you told these kinds of stories.”

He scratched the back of his head. “Ehhhhh. Once, I did tell such stories. But then we had a PTA meeting about it. Not so much after that.”

“How do you know this stuff anyway? You’re like. A science teacher. Not a ghost teacher. Is there a ghost teacher?”

“Stories of the changing of the seasons go hand in hand with the study of the sky, yes? The position of the stars, the phases of the moon, all these things are necessary to understand when to plant your crops and when to harvest them. And the stories we make up when we did not have the understanding of the sciences fascinate me.”

“That was a cool story.”

“Not so innocent, spring, eh?”

“Yeah I guess. It’s kind of like those album covers where it’s like a skull and there’s a flower growing out of it.”

“I have several albums that are like that.”

“Yeah there’s always at least a couple good songs almost for sure. Oh, hey, so anything exciting happening with the sky?”

“Hm,” said Mr. Chazokov. “Nothing flashy, I think. There will be the Moon and Mars and Mercury. They will be together quite close for a little while. It is hard to get a look at Mercury most times, but it will be far from the sun where we can see it.”

“Oh, that’s cool. I might be into that.”

“It will be before sunrise.”

“Oof. I don’t do well with mornings. When’s it gonna be?”

“About a week from now is best.”

“Oh.” Mae had entertained a notion of bringing Angus along. It had become a thing, when time permitted. He swapped stories with their old teacher, who got them hot chocolate and they’d stare up into the night. But a week from now he’d be gone.

“Well. I don’t know, maybe not,” she said.

Mr. Chazokov shrugged. “Whether you do or don’t, I will be there. Was good talking, but I must go.”

“Okay yeah,” Mae said, and they waved their goodbyes. She watched him continue on his way in a detached, thoughtful daze. Talking with him helped. It was cool. Real cool. Up until she was reminded that Angus was leaving too. Then she felt the static in her head.

She slumped against the Party Barn and stuck her tongue out. “Eugggggh,” she said. She could stew. Or she could walk around some more. Or she could go home.

She lacked the energy to poke around Possum Springs. Home was… home was stressful right now. Stewing seemed good. She was already at the Party Barn and band practice would happen eventually. Yeah. It was good to stew sometimes. Sometimes, you just gotta stew. So she stewed.

This sucked. This feeling that she couldn’t get a handle on, that filled her brain with noise, that crowded out her other thoughts. It sucked so bad.

Her hands clenched and unclenched, like they needed to grab something. She needed to _do_ something. She prodded at that notion, which rose from the static like a volcano island emerging from the sea in a cloud of ash and puddles of cooling lava. Do what? Do what? Whaddawegonnado? She kicked the wall behind her with the back of her heels. The obvious solution here was to keep Gregg and Angus in Possum Springs. Their leaving was the thing that sucked. Mae, Bea, Gregg, Angus. Together she believed they could do just about anything. Apart? She had been apart from them before. Alone in her college dorm room, sick and tired and frightened with her head pounding and body shutting down. Apart was bad. Together was good. It all made so much sense. They would have to stay.

It was an idea she had to brainstorm. She picked herself up and back onto the sidewalk she went, preoccupied and zig-zagging until she hit her foot against something very, very hard.

Granite benches formed a perimeter around the Possum Springs War Memorial, presenting a danger to stub-vulnerable toes everywhere. She shot a glare at the anonymous soldier standing atop the column with its list of names. Whatever. Wasn’t his fault. He went and got killed in some war. Rough life, can’t go adding to it by blaming him for something like this.

“Whaddaya say, Anselm?” Mae said, addressing her distant relative, whose name had been etched into the monument. “Ideas? Words of encouragement? How about our family motto? Do we have a family motto? Like, ‘Borowskis never quit’ or something. I mean, it would be wrong. Obviously we do quit. But something like that. No? I’m talking to a statue.”

Feeling the lethargy take her legs again, she leaned against the granite column. “Never did find out how you died, Anselm. Like, you were probably shot. That’s mostly how it happens in wars, right? Maybe you got, like, trench foot. Wow, that would suck. I hope whatever it was it happened quick. Like, not even enough time to think about it. Not much point to living if it’s like, with bullets in your face, I think. I mean, maybe there is. I don’t know. It just seems like there’s probably a pain threshold that once you reach it you’re kind of like ‘you know what maybe dying is better than dealing with prolonged excruciating suffering’ you know?”

Mae smiled and laughed softly to herself. “Maybe that can be the Borowski motto. Ha ha. Yeah.” She slid down into a sitting position and drew her legs up so she could wrap her arms around them. She sat like that for a while and listened to Possum Springs around her. It was soothing. In the distance, she could hear a train barreling over tracks. Hypnotic.

“Yo. Mae.”

She jerked her head up from where she was drowsing, slamming it into the granite column. “FFFFFFFFFF!” she hissed out as she cradled the back of her head with both hands.

“Oh, wow, geez. Are you okay?”

“I’m doing super well! Ow! Geez! Shit!”

She caught her breath and managed to look up. Her vision swam. Dark clothes.

“Heyyyyyy Bea.”

Bea knelt down beside her. She smelled like cigarette smoke, turpentine and sawdust. She steadied Mae with one hand on her shoulder. “What are you even doing down there? Aside from giving yourself a concussion?”

“Uh. Killing time till band practice, I guess,” said Mae.

“That’s like, now.”

“What!”

“Yeah. I’m heading there right now.”

Mae blinked. It was still so bright out. Ugh. Daylight Savings Time. Yet another reason spring was actually terrible. “I completely lost track of time.”

“Yeah,” Bea said. “I can imagine you’d do that.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“That you don’t have much reason to keep track of time these days,” Bea said looking Mae in the eye.

Mae held back the groan that wanted to escape her. Great. _Another_ thing she’d really like to not talk about. If possible, ever.

So it was a small mercy that, when she looked into Bea’s eyes, she could see a similar sentiment. Or at least she imagined it. Either way, Bea changed the subject.

“Come on, let’s go before we’re the ones holding everything up.”

“Okay,” said Mae.

“Hey Mae?”

“Yeah?” Mae gave her head one last rub and then stood up. Bea fell in behind her and as they walked towards the Party Barn, Mae got the distinct feeling the Bea was doing this so she could keep her in view at all times.

“Once we’re done, don’t run off like last time okay? Let’s talk.” 

“Okay.” Mae said. Despite the little pit that opened up in her stomach, she was too tired to say anything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank everyone who read and enjoyed my previous stories. Your positive response has been overwhelming and very, very appreciated. It has also been more or less responsible for inspiring me to write this, so... I hope you like this too. I'm not 100% sure how long this work is going to be, but it has a definite end in mind.


	2. I Completely Will Not Be Fine

“Pretty good!”

“Yeah. That was okay.”

“Yay,” said Mae. She tapped her foot on the Party Barn stage, half still in the rhythm, half in agitation.

Angus looked at her. He cleared his throat, still a bit hoarse from singing. “You feeling okay, Mae?”

“Super. Just tired.”

“Hm. Okay.”

She moved to shrug off the bass’s shoulder strap when Gregg hopped up onto the stage and held his hand palm out. “Naw. You take it home with you.”

“What?”

“I’m not taking it with me,” said Gregg. “I don’t even play it. It would just take up space. So I want you to have my shitty bass.”

Mae blinked at him. “Uh. Sure, okay. I mean I think this was mine at one point anyway. But what about next time?”

“Dude, this is gonna be our last band practice.”

Mae’s expression froze.

“At least for a while,” Angus added.

“Yeah,” said Gregg. “When you and Bea come visit you gotta make sure to bring your gear.”

“Is there even a place for us to play at Bright Harbor?” Bea said.

“Totally,” said Gregg. “We’ll, like, break into a studio or something. Or put egg cartons on our walls. I think that works.”

“We’ll work something out,” said Angus. “Less breaking and entering, maybe.”

“We’d come over here,” said Gregg. “But for the time being Bea continues to be the only one of us with a car.”

“There’s a bus.” Mae’s voice was flat. Like a robot saying a thing that didn’t mean anything.

“Oh, yeah, I didn’t even think of that. Oh, dude, carrying my guitar onto a bus heading out into the sticks, I’ll look like a rebel poet or something.”

“It will be worth it just for that, bug,” Angus said.

“So, we gonna hit up the Taco B— the Clik Clak?” Bea said.

“Can’t tonight,” said Angus. “Landlord’s doing a walk of the apartment.”

“Isn’t it a bit early for that?”

Gregg shrugged. “We boxed everything up and the lease is over. The landlord’s being cool and letting us stay a few nights more.”

“May not be cool if he finds that acid stain on the carpet,” Angus said.

“Heh heh… yeah. We, uh, might not be getting all of that security deposit back.”

“Well, have fun with that,” said Bea. She closed her laptop and slipped it into her bag. Then she looked around. “Where’s Mae?”

Gregg and Angus cast their eyes all over the Party Barn. “Uh…”

“Goddammit.”

~~~

Head full of static and hands working like they wanted to grab something, Mae walked listlessly with the bass swinging unheeded from her neck.

She had the wherewithal to recognize she’d never get out of the front door of the Barn undetected. That door was a terror that squealed in its hinges. Stairwell was okay though and she had walked silently up to the roof. From there it would be an easy leap to the power line then the top of the war memorial and then bam, ground level and freedom possibly.

But when she got to the roof access and breathed in the evening air her brain was still a crowd of noise and her hands wanted her to _do something_ but she didn’t know what and this was no condition to be making multi-story leaps, even she knew that. So she stumble-stepped her way to the edge of the roof and leaned heavily over, looking without seeing Possum Springs below her as she waited for her head to clear.

Beyond the war memorial, beyond the Ol’ Pickaxe, Mae could see workers stringing up the banner advertising the church pretzel thing, a pale echo of the Spring Parade that once made the season something worth putting up with. The banner was draped across the broad facade of the office building that held the Telezoft call center. What was it like in there? She thought idly. Telephones ringing? A list of numbers to call? Or taking calls? She tried to focus on any particulars but the buzzing in her head made it near impossible. Would it be a fun job? You probably sit down at a desk. Mae tried to imagine herself sitting down at a desk. Dressed in… a suit? Is that a suit kind of job? If it’s just phones does it really matter what you’re wearing? What if it’s, like, video phones? Do they get to relax? Have crazy office hijinx? Office hijinx are probably really cool. If anyone came to work in a giant foam Tyrannosaurus Rex get-up would that be cool? Obviously it would be cool, but would it be cool with the boss? Man, bosses wouldn’t be cool with that, the basic definition of ‘boss’ is ‘person who is not cool with anything’ so obviously the T-Rex costume would be out. But it would start a riot. No basically decent person would stand for the T-Rex person getting tossed out of a job. Yeah. On to something with this… could really start a riot…

Mae slumped as her train of thought lost its steam. Her ears perked up when she heard the familiar metal screech of the Party Barn’s front door being forced open and she looked directly down to see Angus and Gregg and Bea.

Bea was looking directly up.

Their eyes met.

Shit.

“Mae! You stay right there!” Bea called out. She traded some words with Gregg and Angus. Then they parted ways, the couple back to their apartment and Bea returning to the Party Barn.

She could still get away, Mae thought. She tried to get up, but the lethargy pinned her legs and her head still fizzed. Still in no condition to balance on power lines. What if she blocked the roof access? That would definitely be rational and stay in the spirit of what Bea had told her to do. It was so clever it probably deserved the Nobel Prize of… Ideas. That was probably a thing. She’d give a talk. Like in those places where sharp-dressed people get on a stage with a big monitor behind them and they talk about how peanut butter is like a city is like a squirrel is like the Moon and that’s why an app that lets you control your washing machine remotely is the most revolutionary thing since the polio vaccine. She watched one of those once and she wasn’t even addled with cough syrup at the time and it still felt like a fever dream. It’s a crazy world and —

She heard the door open. Shit, she was supposed to be escaping. She moved to stand up.

“I swear Mae, you made me walk up three stories so you are going to _stay put_ until I find out why you’ve been avoiding me.”

Mae winced and sagged back down.

“Totally what is up Bea?” She said, slow and tired and groggy.

She heard Bea’s boots tap over the concrete. “Same old, same old. Life sucks, big surprise, nobody’s shocked. I want to hear about you.”

“You know, same.” Mae shrugged and looked away.

Bea came up next to her and settled against the wall. They faced tarnished vent caps that rose from the roof like a small forest of metal mushrooms. Mae imagined a whole meadow like that. Trees of jagged chrome and sap that was caustic chemicals leaving trails of rust and the forest floor was a black tar that drove hot spikes of stench into your nose on hot days —

“Mae?” Bea spoke to her in a quiet voice and it wasn’t even fair because Bea pretty much never did that unless she really wanted to get under Mae’s skin.

“I think we should stop Gregg and Angus from leaving,” Mae said. She blurted it out before she could clap some chains onto the words to keep them from being spoken.

Bea’s eyes widened. Then narrowed. “Why?”

“Because it sucks! It sucks they’re leaving! Okay? God, forget it. You don’t understand.”

Bea’s narrowed eyes sharpened into a glare. She huffed out an angry breath. “You actually think that, don’t you? Oh my god, you actually think that.”

“What?”

“You idiot. Angus has been my _good friend_ since 8th grade! And now he’s leaving! You don’t think I’m not hurting a little because of that?”

“Are we really arguing about this?” Mae’s eyes darted. For an escape route. To avoid Bea’s stare. Whatever. She didn’t know. Both.

“We are not having an argument Mae,” Bea said. “I am telling you how I feel while raising my voice at the same time. You know you’re not the only one who kind of hates this! I’m even sad that Gregg is leaving. I mean, I don’t hang out with him but I still think he’s basically the kind of stand-up good person that anyone would be lucky to know, you know? I get that! So yeah.” Bea reached into her pocket and pulled out a cigarette, lighting it in a practiced motion. A long strand of smoke snaked out of her snout and she sighed. “But you know what? I’m glad they’re leaving too. Because this town has nothing for them. And I can’t in good conscience want them to stay here when they have the option to go. Hell, I want to go. But if I can’t… then I’m glad that someone else can! So I’m glad for them.” 

She let out another breath, this one long and shaky and she closed her eyes. “Just like I was… I was glad for you.”

Mae, who had been busy the entire time looking at her shoes and feeling stupid and ashamed, looked up. “What?”

“I mean… when you left for college… I was envious. Obviously. But at the same time, I kind of felt like… ‘at least one of us got out of here’ you know? Which I guess was kind of silly because we were barely talking back then. But. I still felt it.”

“You were glad I left?”

“This was all before I learned about your issues, obviously,” Bea said hurriedly. “I thought you had escaped. I thought you were going to… be happy. But you clearly weren’t. And… that’s pretty much what I want. I want all of you guys… and me. I want all of us to be happy.”

“So do I!” said Mae.

Bea smiled and gave her a sidelong look. “I know you do. But some of us can’t be happy and be here. Because Possum Springs doesn’t have what we need. It sure as hell doesn’t have what Angus or Gregg needs.”

Mae leaned her head back against bricks and closed her eyes. “Ugh.”

“So when they leave we’re going to smile about it. Okay?”

“You’re right. You’re right, you’re right,” Mae said in a croaking voice.

“Okay.” Bea frowned. “What else is wrong?”

“Why does something else have to be wrong?” Mae said. “Can’t I have just one terrible thing? There doesn’t need to be more! It’s not like misery is in, like, high demand here! Pretty happy with just the one thing.”

“Yeah I’m sure we all feel the same way, but that’s not how life works.” Bea said. She settled closer to Mae. “So what’s wrong?”

“Well. I did get fired. Which you know. No more Taco Buck.”

“Yeah,” Bea said with a sigh. “There is that. I told you I’d help you.”

Mae sighed. She felt tired. Tired and bad. “Okay well. Okay. I know. It still sucks though. When I told my parents they… the looks on their faces. It sucked. It really sucked.”

“Yeah.”

“Like, on top of everything else, I get my ass fired. And they have enough problems. I think we’re going to lose the house.”

“Oh. Mae. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was getting that bad.” Bea leaned in closer.

“Yeah,” said Mae. “I mean… I think we’re still a ways from that becoming a thing, but dad’s always been evasive about telling me how bad things are and mom kind of treads lightly about it. But I mean I can hear them talk just fine and… yeah. Maybe not, like, next week or whatever. But it feels like it’s coming at us. Like a train.”

In a moment of perfect punctuation, she heard the horn of a distant train, lonely and forlorn bouncing off the hills.

“So yeah,” she continued. “That’s not cool. Dad is… I mean, he’s trying. He’s, uh, trying to organize a union. Get proper pay and hours and that kind of thing.”

“How’s it going?” said Bea.

“It’s kind of not? He doesn’t really talk about it but from what he does say, everyone’s scared. They’re kind of just holding on to what little they have. Afraid of losing it, I guess.”

“Yeah…” said Bea.

“And I sit here, being completely useless.” Mae looked at her hands, still flexing as if they wanted to do something. Hold something. She clenched them, forcing them into fists, just to keep still. “I don’t know. My brain is… it’s like, bubbling. Like. I want to do something. I need to do something. But I don’t know what. All I came up with is stopping Gregg and Angus. But that wouldn’t actually help anyone or do anything except make everyone miserable, I guess. I’m just tired of being useless.”

“Mae…”

“I mean, I still want to do something, but something that actually helps. But I don’t know shit about being helpful!” 

She tensed up when she felt an arm around her shoulder. Bea drew her in and she was leaning now against Bea’s chest.

“I know it sucks,” Bea said. “I’ve been there.”

Mae let out a long breath. “Yeah.”

“And because I’ve been there, I know you’re going to survive it. Okay? And… you’re not useless, Mae. I felt that same kind of powerlessness. It’s got nothing to do with you. It’s the shitty circumstance you found yourself in.”

“Okay.” Mae relaxed and she could feel the buzzing in her head subside. Not vanish. But it was definitely… calmer. “I guess. I guess it’s not all bad,” she said. “Gregg offered me his job at the Snack Falcon.”

“That’s good,” said Bea. “What did you say?”

“Uh,” Mae said, knowing that Bea probably could guess what she had said.

“I think it’s something worth seriously considering, Mae.”

“Okay. Okay, okay, okay.” Another long breath before Mae spoke again. “Do, uh, you wanna do anything? Like, the Clik Clak?”

“Nah. I’m still tired from all those stairs you made me walk. Think I’m going to chill up here.”

“Yeah. Me too,” said Mae. “I’m still tired from. Thinking.” 

They sat in restive silence, sometimes in a half-dozing state and sometimes staring into the encroaching twilight. Mae plucked at her bass lazily. Sometimes folk songs her grandfather had taught her. The good kinds about murders in the woods and murderers sentenced to hang. Other times she played idly through the songs she had practiced with her friends.

Eventually, as the sky deepened into purple, Bea lifted her arm from around Mae’s shoulder and picked herself up. “Welp. I think it’s time for me to drive you home and then get to my own.”

Mae nodded her assent and got to her feet.

They got to Mae’s home in a mixture of silence and idle chatter. When she waved Bea goodbye and the car receded into the night it was with a smile. But even then she could feel the static encroaching in her head, and the hand raised in a wave curled in on itself with the aching need to hold something.

~~~

Mae woke from her futon with a start, sunlight in her face. She could feel that familiar lethargic tug of her brain emerging from another nightmare she could barely remember. She played at the edges of it, like a mouse smart enough to know that the cheese is resting on a trap, but dumb enough to think that it could take nibble just a little bit without setting off the spring that would snap its spine.

A dim memory. Her in the woods. She had held something in her hand except it wasn’t a bat it was a torch and it lit the snow piled up in the dead branches above her so they looked like blank white faces. Two figures with her. Trapped with her. Tied to stakes. And they were waiting for her. The tinder piled at their feet. She lowered the torch…

Welp. She lost it. The dream faded. Seemed kind of badass though. Very bleak Scandinavian metal.

“Blehhhhhh,” she said as she wrestled with her shoes.

Her mother was in the kitchen, reading about something really terrible. “Morning hon!” she called out.

Mae neatly landed the final step, then padded over.

“How are we feeling today, sunshine?”

“Honestly, gross.” Mae hopped up onto the counter and kicked her legs softly against the cabinet below.

“Good gross or bad gross?”

“I’m not sure there’s a good gross.”

“Oh, I don’t know honey. Life is full of possibilities.”

“That it is. But in this case, bad gross. Pollen gross.”

“You’re not allergic all of a sudden, are you?”

“Nah. But I can still feel it. All gritty. Getting in my eyes.”

“Did you sleep with the window open?”

“It gets hot up in the attic. Not looking forward to summer.”

“Well aside from that, how are you feeling?”

“Um. I’m okay.” Mae looked down at her hands and wrung them anxiously. “But, uh, I kinda wanna know how we’re doing. You know. All of us.”

“Honey you don’t have to worry about that.”

“Mom, I want to know. I’m an adult, I should… know about this stuff. Help with it somehow.”

Her mother let out a sigh. “Well, we’re doing what we can to make it work hon but all we can do right now is keep trying to make ends meet. That’s really all you can accomplish, most of the time. This isn’t the kind of problem where a solution just appears out of the sky.”

Mae sighed. “Yeah. I guess it isn’t. Would be nice if dad could get that union started. Tell his boss to pay them more or… something.”

“Yes, that would be nice. But it’s an uphill fight. Lots of places do the best they can to make it sound like joining a union is a good way to lose a job, and most folks here are too desperate to take the risk of finding out if that’s true. Which it isn’t.”

“It’s kind of a bad and terrible world, mom.”

“It can be that, sweetie.”

Memories of the evening before came back to Mae. Bea’s words. “But. I know that even if we can’t keep the house… I know that we’ll survive. I know that we’ll survive.” Mae said it twice, like a haiku. “I know that we’ll survive.” Three times now, like a magic spell.

Her mother smiled at her. “Yes we will. I know that too. And so does your father. We’ll survive.”

Mae put a smile on her face and this time it wasn’t entirely tight and forced. Eventually she noted the book under her mother’s clasped hands. “What ya reading this time?”

“It’s about a mountain climber that got lost in the mountains. He survived by looting protein bars from the frozen bodies of the climbers who had died during prior climbs. Then he fell into a crevasse in a glacier and only survived the fall because a rope on his harness snagged on an outcropping of ice. He stayed like that for two weeks, hanging upside down in a crevasse in a glacier eating old protein bars until an avalanche filled the crevasse with snow that let him climb back up to the surface where a sightseeing helicopter filled with tourists saw him.”

“Wow, see mom? If people can survive that then we can totally deal with this.”

“Oh, yes, but that’s not what makes this book interesting. You see while he was hanging upside down all the blood rushing to his head mixed with malnutrition and pain from his injuries induced a fugue-state in him and he began writing a really quite complex manifesto. He used protein bar wrappers as paper and his own blood as ink. This is a fascinating look into a delirium-maddened mind.”

“Yikes. Okay, mom, I’m getting out of here.” Mae hopped off the counter.

“Ha ha, okay. Oh! Mae, honey, I almost forgot. You be careful out there. It’s sinkhole season.”

Mae looked at her mother. “It is so messed up that that’s a thing.”

“It’s the winter thaw. All that snow melting off the mountains and eroding the rock below us,” said her mother. “Sinkholes happen year round but these days it’s especially dangerous. So no wandering around too much, okay?”

“I’ll keep it to the town, mom.”

“Take care, sweetie.” 

A guilty stab pierced Mae’s heart as she turned away. The unspoken tension of her return to unemployment was nearly unbearable. She wanted to tell her mother about the Snack Falcon, but getting her hopes up would be the worst thing possible. Instead she said nothing and gave an idle wave.

Another day in Possum Springs. She stepped out onto the sidewalk and gave Mr. Twigmeyer sitting out on his porch a lazy wave. Her feet took her into town and a thought bobbed in her head.

Get to Gregg and tell him she needs the terrible job. Try not to think about how he used the word ‘credit score’ yesterday. Or the word ‘lease.’ He is growing up. Becoming responsible. It’s normal for him to use those words. Those strange words that sound like alien language coming from his mouth. If she found him and he said ‘mortgage’ today it just might be too much for her to handle.

This would happen to her too. It would have to happen to her. It scared the daylights out of her. More than it scared her when she thought a ghost was stalking her. Ghost stalking was something she could get a handle on. A ghost following her around? Couldn’t be easier to wrap your head around. Mae knew about ghosts. Interest rates? Loans? Security deposits? Sweet crap, Bea was right. The boring stuff really was the scary stuff. She could feel her heart race just having those words in her head. How did Gregg stand it?

Her mind whirled with awful thoughts as she stumbled deeper into town, the static building in her head like a rising tide. It was profoundly not cool to feel like this so soon after getting out of bed.

From the corner of her eye, she saw a smear of color alive and standing out from the line of buildings with their cracked vinyl sidings and faded paint.

“Yo Mae.”

“Selmerssssssss,” Mae said in a monotone drone. She lurched towards the steps where Selma sat. “What are the things that are happening?”

“Whoa, you okay?”

“Just feeling a little bluh, the usual,” Mae said.

“Okay well, if you’re feeling bluh maybe you should take it easy.”

“I’ll be fine, I just gotta make sure I don’t bluh myself into traffic. How about you?”

“I’m good. Feels nicer now that the winter’s over. Prime stoop sitting weather.”

“Has everyone betrayed their principles? Everyone knows autumn’s the best.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty good. But today is nice too and autumn is months away. Work with what you got.”

“I refuse to compromise!”

Selma tucked her hands into her hoodie pocket and shrugged. “You learn to compromise eventually. When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut. When I was a teen I wanted to be a doctor. Nowadays I just want to be happy.” 

“These are deep thoughts, Selmers. Deep and frightening.”

“We’re in the deep end of the pool that is life.”

“Nice. I can’t even swim.”

“You never learned?” said Selma.

“I did. But It’s been so long I don’t even know if I can. Like, people say it’s like riding a bike. It’s just one of those things you never forget. But can I afford to take the risk of finding out? Is it worth the risk of drowning?”

“Deep thoughts.”

“Most deep.”

“I just made up a quick poem about spring but considering your opinion on the subject I don’t know if you want to hear it.”

Mae held up her hands. “Whoa now, let’s not get extremely insane. I am always up for hearing your poems.”

“Winter snows/But spring grows/Under toes.”

Mae nodded. “Nice.”

Selma tilted her head. “It’s okay. When was the last time you felt grass under you bare feet?”

“Geez, I don’t know.” Mae pondered. “That’s kind of one of those questions that’s really weird but also really obvious. Like. Grass is everywhere, but I haven’t done something like that since I was a kid I think.”

“Yeah. I remember it feeling nice, and there’s grass right here. And I have my feet. But I don’t want to walk around barefoot in the grass. It’s kind of strange.”

Mae made a thoughtful noise and they stayed there in silence. Then Mae moved. “I’m heading to the Snack Falcon. You wanna come?”

“Nah. I’m just gonna hang here. I don’t know where you find the energy.”

Mae blinked at her blearily. She raised a hand to her face. “This is energy?”

“Sure. Even when you’re not at your best you’re still out here talking to people. Talking to me.”

“Aw, dude, Selmers. It is like, no effort to talk to you. You’re fun to talk to.”

“Thanks, Mae.”

Selmer poems were supposed to be the start Mae needed to the day. Aural caffeine for the broken soul. Instead she still felt frazzled. And looked it too, apparently.

“You know, you don’t look that hot, Mae.”

“Rude.”

“That’s not what I meant. Are you seriously okay?”

“I don’t seriously know. I guess I’m just kind of down? Only… I’m not?”

“How’s that?”

Mae put one hand on her forehead. “I don’t know, dude. It’s like ever since yesterday my brain’s gone all static-y. And I feel like… I don’t know. I wanna do something with my hands. Like. Hit. Something. Kinda.”

“Hm,” said Selma.

“Well I’m glad you’re not calling 911 on me after I said I want to do a violence,” said Mae.

“Wouldn’t do that. I’ve been there.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you deal with it?”

“Having a creative outlet helps. Like poetry.”

“I’m not really a word rhyming kind of person.”

Another shrug from Selma. “Doesn’t have to be poetry. Just something that lets you express yourself. For me, personally, the feeling you described means that there’s a lot of thoughts that need to be expressed. And your brain can’t handle it for whatever reason. So you need an outlet. Something that tells other people ‘I’m here, and these are my thoughts on matters that I’m dealing with.’ That kind of thing.”

“I guess that makes sense,” said Mae.

“Well. Consider doing that. Instead of hurting people.”

“Yeah, that is a reasonable suggestion I think. Like, you’re not out of line to suggest this.”

She waved goodbye to Selma and continued on her way. It was probably not a terrible idea. But the only self-expression she ever did was… music and her journal. And those didn’t seem like the place to put her feelings into. She was, to be frank, far too cruddy with her bass to express herself the way she wanted to, and journaling felt too small for what she was feeling. She needed a bigger canvas. Whatever she was feeling, it needed a bullhorn. It wanted to be expressed in a blast radius. It was like a

_fire in winter_

thing. It was a thing. Mae’s brain was beginning to spark again. God. She needed a rest. She had just walked a little and she already needed to mellow out somehow. Let her brain chill the shit out. The church? They say a person can think at a church. But then she’d see her mom and that was only going to stir shit up even more. She needed to let shit rest. Library? Too far. She was tottering past the old trolley tunnel when she looked up at the church banner and, like lightning rending the night sky, the answer occurred to her in a flash. She knew the perfect place to relax. It had the perfect listener too.


	3. I'm All Hyper

The climb was… ill-advised. She was still out of it; her head was spinning and racing with emotions and thoughts too overwhelming to handle. She had slipped up a few times. Jumps missed. But she was pretty good at staying on her feet and soon she found herself on the right ledge, in front of the right window. It was still open by a crack and she was able to slip through it without effort.

She heaved herself into the room and collapsed onto the floor. Dust kicked up and danced in the sunlight streaming through the window. It’s almost certain that Mae was the only person who ever came up to this floor. Even when it was spring, the pride, the center, the _king_ of spring continued to rot unnoticed. It really was a goddamn tragedy.

Down some stairs, past some dusty plastic flowers, then up some more stairs. She walked into the tomb of Mallard P. Bloomingro without stopping, fully expecting to be alone and not being disappointed.

The remains of the massive parade float was right where she had left it. God. It had to at least have been two months since she last visited. The great, hulking, paper-mache and plaster corpse of Mallard was piled into a great heap that culminated with its great big round head canted in a broken angle against the far corner of the room on top of its broken body. Beak open vacantly and eyes staring blindly. In the dim light it was a great beast that lurked, the monster in the shadow. But a good kind of monster. Mae’s kind of monster.

“How you doing, Mallard?” she said into the silent dark. Her eyes darted to the long-abandoned rat’s nest. Once the home of starving vermin, it was empty and she was the only living thing in the room. “Don’t mind if I stay here and just… I dunno, do nothing, do you?”

Silence.

“Thanks dude. You’re a good guy, Mallard. A real good guy.” Mae leaned against the base of the ruined parade float and slid down until she was sitting. She took a long breath. “Damn, your big. Like. Dinosaur big. I keep thinking that every time I see you. If you went back in time, I bet you’d fit right into the Dinosaur Age. Cuz, like, they had feathers too. Not like your feathers obviously. But they’d probably recognize you as one of their own. You’d be the fanciest Tyrannosaurus Rex. The king of dinosaurs. And I’m not just saying that cuz I like you.”

“You’re not just the king of dinosaurs. You’re like, the king of Possum Springs, you know that? And it sucks that they just stuffed you into a room that no one goes into. You should like… have a proper funeral, you know?” She reached up and grabbed a piece of peeling float. It came off with a soft tear, like tissue paper. It was dry and crumbly between her fingers.

“Back in the old days, they had proper funerals for kings. Like. Buried with the swords of all the enemies he vanquished and stuff like that. Real metal shit. I think they used to bury kings with their servants too. Like, even if they weren’t dead. I think that’s kind of a raw deal. Let’s not do that.”

She slid further, until she was lying down on the floor staring up at Mallard’s beak sun-bleached beak. “In fact, let’s not do _anything_ for a while, am I right? I think there should be some time where we just don’t do anything. At all. No demands, no responsibilities, no bosses making demands. Just a chance to go completely inert and let life wash over us. Like I’m doing right now. This is probably the calmest I’ve been in days. Like, my brain has been weird ever since Gregg offered me that Snack Falcon job of his. I guess it didn’t really hit me until then. That he’s really not gonna be here anymore. That the days where he’s here are coming to an end. And the days where he isn’t here are just about to begin. Like the changing of seasons. Winter into spring. Like Mr. Chazokov’s story. Shit’s changing. Oh man. What if someone somewhere did a Tolb sacrifice that changed everything so that Gregg and Angus are leaving? Or… or… shit. I don’t know. I guess that doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

She wrung her hands together against her chest. She closed her eyes. “I kinda had this dream. I just remembered it. Not really a dream that I can, like, tell anyone. Cuz it’s so weird and kind of scary. But I’ll tell you. I mean. It’s not even, like, elaborate. I think Mr. Chazokov’s story kind of got to me. I was in the woods, it was winter, at night, and Gregg and Angus were tied to stakes in the ground and there was all this dry wood piled around them and I had this torch in my hand and I and I and I…”

There was the sound of something going _thump_ against metal. Mae jerked herself up into a sitting position, eyes wide. Her ears were twitching. There was someone outside the room.

“Holy crap,” she said.

The silence immediately after was suffocating. It was the silence of a presence that knew it had been discovered and was forcing itself to stay very quiet, which was a very noisy kind of silence that set Mae’s heart racing. She got up on her feet, quick and quiet. Dust swirled around her feet as she stepped stealthily to the exit. Her ears flicked, alert to any sound. As she reached for the door she heard something. Rhythmic. Vast and echoing. Like a giant heart or a great panting beast.

She flexed her hand, that familiar ache of wanting something solid to hold. But here there was nothing but chunks of parade float too heavy to wield. _Screw it_ , she thought, and with one hand she pulled the door open.

“Aaaah!”

“Aaaah— Lori?”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Lori shrank away with her hands up. She was tiny. Like, Mae-tiny, which on one hand meant that Mae wasn’t the shortest person in her social circle so that was something. On the other, Lori was basically a kid so that didn’t count for much. She was wheezing through her mouth.

“Oh, geez, Lori. It’s okay. You startled me is all.” Mae put up her hands with her palms out, trying to placate Lori. “Just, y’know, easy breaths. It’s cool.”

Lori put her hand to her chest as she gradually brought her breathing under control. “Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I’m fine. Okay.”

“Yeah.” Mae relaxed and let her arms fall to her sides. “What even are you doing here, kid?”

“I saw you from where I was sitting on the roof, adult,” Lori said. “And I saw you go through a window. And I was wondering what you were doing. Okay?”

“Oh. Okay. I guess that’s fair. But geez, it’s dangerous getting here. You should be more careful.”

“I’m fine. I know how to climb.” Lori gave her the look that Mae recognized well for having used it so often herself. The don’t-tell-me-what-to-do-you-old-person look. Was she going to get that look now? That is, she already was. But was this the start of that downward slope? How terrible.

Oblivious to these thoughts, Lori pushed past her. “Oh wow. Wow wow wow. What is that?” She approached Mallard.

“Don’t you recognize him?” said Mae.

“Uh. I’m pretty sure I would have if I ever saw it!”

“Oh. Maybe he was before your time. This was Mallard P Bloomingro. He was, like, the king of parade floats back in the day. The biggest and the best. Every year during the spring parade he would like, roll down Centre Avenue and basically be great.”

“I never knew this!”

“Yeah, they junked him. After the driver lost control of him and he like, crushed some kid’s legs.”

“Wow,” said Lori. She was completely enthralled. “That’s brutal.”

“This was all back when I was a kid,” Mae said, wincing as she said it. So this is what it is. To be old. Oh god. All these experiences in your head that younger people didn’t have.

Lori ran her hands around torn edges and brushed away dust. She traced the edges of the large hole where rats had once nested within Mallard. “It looks like. This movie I saw where a giant dead alien was like, curled up in the center of a spaceship. And when the astronauts studied it they found a hole in its stomach where other aliens were living inside it, and punched through it once they were mature. And then all the astronauts died.”

“Not too far from the truth.”

“Wowwwww,” said Lori. “It’s like a dead thing. A great big corpse. I could live inside it. Be the alien that eats it from the inside.”

“I think there are enough rat droppings there to make that an actual health hazard,” said Mae.

Lori looked around, taking in the whole room. Her face scrunched up. “How in the world did they get a parade float all the way up here?”

“Huh. That’s actually a really good question.” Mae looked around. The wall opposite of the one Mallard was leaning against wasn’t actually a wall. It was a partition. Either there was a freight elevator on the other side or the Possum Springs city council had developed teleportation technology. Anything was possible.

“This is so great! This whole floor is great!” Lori said. “Now I know where to go if I need a deserted abandoned hallway for a movie!”

“Shooting another horror movie?”

“I’m always thinking about making one. Even when I’m not.”

“That’s cool.”

Lori looked at Mae. “Did you really dream about burning someone alive?”

“Uh…” It was probably wildly optimistic to assume that Lori hadn’t overheard that, but surely it was reasonably optimistic to assume she wouldn’t bring it up.

Lori’s eyes widened. “Oh. It was weird I asked that, wasn’t it? Sorry. Sorry.” She began to wheeze.

“No! No, it’s okay! Lori I’m not mad just take it easy!” It wasn’t entirely okay, but Mae found herself saying that a lot around Lori.

“So you did?” Lori said after bringing her breathing back under control.

Closing her eyes, Mae pressed a hand against her forehead. “Urgh. Yes? I mean. I guess. I don’t totally remember every detail, but yeah.”

“Oh. You know people don’t usually die from the actual fire. They suffocate on the smoke.”

Mae opened one eye. “Oh. Word?”

“Yeah. I think about burning to death a lot and if it ever happens to me I think I’ll just breathe in as much smoke as I can,” said Lori. “Less painful that way. Smoke is pretty bad but burning is probably worse, I think.”

“Yeah. I can see that.”

“You think of it too?”

“Not usually. It was just a dream. I guess I was thinking about something Mr. Chazokov told me. He was my old teacher.”

“I have him! He teaches science!”

“Oh, right. I should’ve known he’d be one of your teachers.”

“I guess he’s okay.”

Mae jabbed a finger at Lori. “Mr. Chazokov is one of the coolest teachers around. Him and Ms. Quelcy. If you’re in their classes don’t you cause them any trouble.”

“Okay, okay!” said Lori. She looked up at Mallard’s beak. “What did he say that made you think of burning people?”

“Just some old story about how in the old days people used to sacrifice people to the gods to, like, end winter and start spring.”

“Oh yeah, Tolb.”

“You know about Tolb?”

“I’ve read about it. There’s like, a bunch of stuff people used to do at the start of spring. Like, death stuff.

“I think I’m starting to get why they did,” said Mae.

“I mean, spring comes anyway,” Lori said. “The death stuff is cool though.”

“Yeah, sure, spring comes anyway. But… we need to make things happen so we can know that spring has come.” Mae said it slowly. She felt like she was in the dark and a small glimmer of light was showing her the shape of an idea she could only begin to describe. “Like… months aren’t a real thing. The sun doesn’t say ‘hm, it’s October so I’ll shine for this amount of time’ or something. It’s all stuff we made up for our own benefit to keep track of things. Or like birthdays. Our bodies don’t care if we’re a year older. We’re always getting older from the perspective of our, like, guts and stuff. But we mark our age by the year instead of by every moment. We fill our lives with signposts that, like, guide us.”

“Signposts that are dudes stuck in a fire!” said Lori.

“Ha ha. Yeah. And they tell us where we are in time. Like, we burned this dude to death, so it’s springtime, time for change! I think… I think I don’t have a signpost. To tell me that things are changing. Maybe that’s why I’ve felt so weird lately.”

Lori gave Mae a quizzical look, but by this point she was talking almost entirely to herself. “Like… Mallard used to be my signpost that spring was here. But when they put him away it meant I couldn’t… find the right feelings. How I’m supposed to feel. Or act? I don’t know. But right now things are changing. Friends are leaving. And… I need something. Something to tell me that’s what’s happening. Or… something that shows how I feel about what’s happening. A way to say goodbye. Agh. I can’t find the words to say this good.”

“You should just do the thing you think you need to, then,” said Lori. “Instead of finding the words to describe it. I think.”

Mae looked up at Mallard. Her head felt like a power line, humming and full of tension. The Dinosaur King of Possum Springs. Her heart practically jumped in her chest. When she took a breath it was shaky and strong at the same time. Something snapped inside of her. Not like a thing breaking, but a circuit completing. A current. A light. A _fire_.

“Oh my god,” she said. “I think I… need to… need to…” She began hopping from one foot to the other.

“Need to what?” said Lori. “Go to the bathroom?”

“No! I need to find Germ!”

“Who’s Germ? Hey wait!”

But Mae was already out the room and jumping the stairs. Her brain was moving ahead of her and full of thoughts that teetered at the edge of an abyss. If she disturbed them too much they could fall away from her and she’d have nothing. So instead of thinking she acted. Up and through the window and out into the day.

~~~

The pawn shop a couple buildings down had wi-fi for some reason. It was a fact that Bea capitalized on. If she stood in one corner of the Ol’ Pickaxe with her laptop, it could get a pretty good signal. She had even used some of the materials from her store to build a shelf at just the right place for her computer. It wasn’t something she used too often. Having a customer come in and see her standing at the corner of the store browsing the internet was not the coolest thing to do. But when business was slow — like today — it was something for her to do that helped keep her mind off the drudgery.

When it was busy, she’d put a stack of random pamphlets on the shelf. The customers never suspected it was her secret free internet shelf. That was what passed for subterfuge in a typical day for Bea. Truly, she lived a life of intrigue that bordered on the outright rebellious. Living on the edge like the most harrowing of ne’er-do-wells and rogues. With this stolen wi-fi.

Sometimes Bea suspected that all this sarcasm was going to end up numbing her to the point where a meteor could fall directly on her and she wouldn’t have feelings enough to register the transition from life to death.

She was about to take down the pamphlets and set up her computer for a little idle browsing when she saw a flash of black down the street that caught her eye.

It zipped past her window. Bea opened the door, the little bell on top of the frame jingling as she did.

“Mae?” she said. But her friend was already well out of ear shot, rushing down the road. “Hey Mae!”

Bea turned when she heard a labored huffing behind her. A teenage girl grabbed onto the door and leaned against it, wheezing.

“Who… is… Germ…?” said Lori.

Bea looked back towards the direction Mae had gone and narrowed her eyes. “Hmmm,” she said.

~~~

Angus had been planning this for a long while now.

Nearly as soon as he decided that what he had with Gregg was a Serious Thing, he began thinking about how they could get out of Possum Springs. He started with a spreadsheet. A really nice spreadsheet with formulas and columns and rows. Man. It was a sweet as hell spreadsheet. He was going to save it. Even after they get properly set up in Bright Harbor, that was one file he was going to keep for both sentimental and aesthetic reasons. It really was just a well put-together spreadsheet. It should probably go into a portfolio so he could show it to people during job interviews. A man who makes a spreadsheet like that is the type of man that doesn’t screw around. And they’d be able to see that. Career ahoy.

Okay. That probably wouldn’t happen. But he was still keeping the spreadsheet.

It had a timetable, a list of budget goals with a total that he had figured out down to the fourth decimal place. And they had done it! Gregg and Angus had socked away the money. They found a place in Bright Harbor. They were making the Plan happen.

Angus stood in their apartment. Their bare apartment. It was all ready for them to leave. Save for a small pile of pillows and comforters they were now using to sleep in, everything had been boxed away waiting for the day the moving truck came. Their lease was all taken care of. They got dinged in the security deposit from the battery acid stain that the Food Donkey robot had left on the carpet, but Angus knew who he was dating. He had given them wiggle room in the budget in case of situations like this. When Mae had returned to Possum Springs, he put a little more extra wiggle in the budget. But he still made it work. _They_ made it work.

His stomach twisted in excitement and anticipation about the coming days. They had elected to extend their stay here for a few days longer. Gregg really loved those church pretzels. But that was okay. This was happening. Man. He was so keyed up he had to go outside and walk off some of this energy. He stepped out of the apartment and into the elevator.

At the ground floor, he stretched his arms and took in a deep breath. Then he leaped back onto the foyer of the apartment building as Mae sprinted past him, down the sidewalk towards the Snack Falcon like something was chasing her. 

“Mae?”

He looked the opposite direction for signs of pursuit. There he saw, weaving through traffic, Bea’s car.

Angus pursed his lips.

“Hmmm,” he said, and raised his hand, flagging Bea down.

~~~

Giving up the Snack Falcon. Gregg wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Logically he should be ecstatic. Free. Free of this place. It’s a rad thought to have. No more standing behind a counter, wishing for a coma or something. He’d probably wind up standing behind a counter at Bright Harbor, but at least it would be a Bright Harbor counter. That was something to look forward to, probably.

But until then…

There were so many things he never really got around to at the Snack Falcon. Primarily because the things he hadn’t done yet crossed a line so stark that even he recognized it’d be grounds for immediate firing, if not possibly jail time. Like, he had spent over a year staring up at the fire sprinkler that was directly above the counter, well within reach if he stood on the countertop. He had this idea that the sprinkler could probably support his whole weight if he were to dangle from it. On the other hand, if it didn’t he could bring the entire emergency fire system down on top of him and flood the store. It never seemed worth finding out. But seeing as how he would be leaving soon…

No. Gregg shook his head. No, not even now. Mae was gonna take over and it was his sacred True Bro duty to make sure she got the store in as good a condition as he could manage.

Gregg looked at the floor. It was currently very sticky. He was standing in the middle of the store with puddles of like thirteen different sodas pooling together on the tiles.

Probably should have thought of that True Bro stuff before deciding to play slip ‘n slide with that last shipment of sodas, Gregg thought to himself. Oh well, ‘as good a condition as he could manage,’ and this was what that was!

Gregg started when the doors to the Falcon opened. He swiveled around, sliding in soda puddles to face the entrance just in time to see Mae running past the door and past the Falcon. “Oh hey, Mae — ohshitwhoa!!”

He fell back and landed on the floor. He lay sprawled and groaning. “Aw jeez I smell like every kind of Fiascola,” he said.

~~~

“What exactly is worrying you here?” Angus said. He sat in the front passenger seat, eyes ahead as he spoke.

Bea gave him a quick glance, then focused back on the road. “I don’t know. Maybe nothing. But I have a feeling.” She changed lanes abruptly to get by a line of orange traffic cones and road workers. “Goddamn sinkhole inspections right in the middle of the day! Whose idea was that?” she hissed.

“It’s nice how you’re worried about her like this.”

“Maybe I just want to take a break from the shop,” Bea said stiffly.

“I’m worried about her!” Came a voice from the backseat.

Angus turned to look over his shoulder. “Um. Who are you?”

“Lori M!”

He looked at Bea. “Who…”

“I don’t know,” Bea said. “Some kid. I think she’s a friend of Mae’s?”

“Oh, look, Gregg is outside the Falcon. Maybe he’s seen Mae.” Angus rolled down the window and Gregg trotted up as they pulled in front of the Snack Falcon.

“Dude!” said Gregg. “What’s Mae running for?”

“Why are you all wet?” said Angus.

“Whuh? Oh. It’s soda. I had a spill. Forget all that, what’s with Mae?” Gregg’s eyes darted to the back of the car. “Dude, did you abduct a child?”

“No!” Angus and Bea said.

“I’m 15!” said Lori.

“Whatever, let me in and let’s get Mae.”

“No way,” Bea said.

“What?”

“You’re covered in soda, Gregg! I’m not going to have you turn the inside of my car into a syrup-y mess!”

“Come on, seriously?”

“Look, just get cleaned up. We’ll get Mae.”

Gregg looked at Angus. Angus shrugged.

“Aw man, okay, okay! She was going past the Clik Clak. Probably to the old Food Donkey.”

The car peeled away onto the street. Gregg watched as they went on their way. Then he looked down at his dripping clothes.

“Man, most of my stuff is all packed up too.”

~~~

“Nice, Germ,” said Mae. “Think you can get that ready before tomorrow night?”

“I can chug an entire bottle of extra hot hot sauce,” Germ said. “And I can do this.”

“These are both good things to know. Thanks buddy. And don’t tell anyone. Especially Gregg.”

“I’ll never talk. I have a strong will. I’ll find you when I got everything.”

“Nice.”

Germ turned on his heels and walked away from the Food Donkey. Mae watched him recede into the concrete wastes of the abandoned parking lot, weeds wrestling the asphalt into submission in a process of reclamation that would take years. At some point she lost sight of Germ. She never quite knew where he went off to. He went… somewhere.

She heard the mechanical sounds of a car picking itself out of the chorus of engines from back in Possum Springs proper. She turned and when she saw Bea she raised both her arms over her head and waved.

The car trundled to a halt beside her, settling into the craters of the neglected parking lot.

“Whoa, hey guys. Uh. What’re you doing here?” Mae said.

Bea stepped out of the car and gave Mae a long look as she approached.

“Everything okay, Mae?”

Mae walked with a spring in her step. She passed Bea with a smile. “It’s. A. Surprise.”

Bea followed Mae with her eyes. “Oh my god,” she said.


	4. I Am The Bandit Queen

After that, Mae became a difficult person to track down. Bea had to return to work and it would’ve been cruel to force Angus to keep track of her.

“I don’t know where she gets this energy,” Angus said. “But I’ll probably definitely die if I have to run across town keeping an eye on her.”

“Yeah cap’n,” Gregg said. “Don’t die now.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, bug.”

“So,” said Gregg, “I don’t get why we’re freaking out over this. Mae talks to Germ. It’s a thing that she does.”

Bea shifted. They were sitting in a booth at the Taco Buck. It was evening turning to night. The dimming world cast a deepening blue pall that caused the headlights of passing cars to pop out and Bea watched through the window as their light streaked down the road. It was better than looking Angus and Gregg in the eye and telling them that Mae had talked about hatching some scheme to keep them from leaving town. And then earlier today she was talking to Germ, keeping secrets, promising a surprise. There were a number of ways she could put these disparate facts together, few of them good.

“I just think we should find out what she’s up to,” said Bea. “I mean. I should. I should. You guys should be… uh… careful.”

“We should be careful?” said Angus.

“How careful?” said Gregg. “I already look both ways crossing the street. It’s kind of a big deal to ask more of me.”

“One time I found him touching the hot surface of our stove. Like, the kind of thing people say that kids do when they’re two years old, and then learn to never do again,” said Angus.

“I’m not reckless I just don’t accept common knowledge until I’ve verified it myself multiple times.” Gregg said. “I’m a true skeptic.”

“It’s just that the last time we needed something from Germ it was dynamite,” said Bea. “Literal industrial explosives.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” said Gregg. “She’s probably like, playing video games.”

“If you really want to find out, just ask her,” said Angus.

“I tried. It turns out she is capable of keeping secrets.”

“Yeah, dude. I’m the blabbermouth,” said Gregg. “What did that kid say?”

“Lori? She doesn’t know. All she said was that Mae got quiet then she ran off saying she had to see Germ. Although…”

“What’s up?” said Angus.

“I mean, we’re not the _only_ people she talks to,” said Bea. “I know she hangs out with, uh, Selma. Maybe someone else knows. I mean, I don’t think she’s doing anything bad. I know I look nosy here. I just want to make sure she’s not going to wind up hurting herself. I guess.”

Angus and Gregg looked at each other.

“What?” said Bea.

“We just think it’s really adorable how you’re looking out for Mae,” said Angus.

“Guys.”

“No seriously, dude,” said Gregg. “It’s not something that I really talk about except, to, uh, Angus, but I was a little worried about Mae being, like, alone when I left. You know?”

“She’s not a little kid, Gregg.”

“C’mon, you know what I mean. She like, needs someone.”

At some point Bea had pulled a napkin out of the dispenser on their table. She poked holes in it with her claws. “Eh. Think she wants you more than me. You’re her best friend.” She stared at the little holes. The peeling formica table underneath it. She recognized a coffee stain that was there when this place was still Pastabilities. New name, same stains.

“Yeah, but… I totally love Mae, she’s the best. But you know how I mean. We can, like, egg each other on sometimes, you know? Like, I do something so she has to do something to top it and it just goes on and on. And we go, like, ‘crimes, dude’ and laugh about it. She needs someone who can put the brakes on.” Gregg shifted and leaned against Angus.

“I like to think I’m her friend, not her emergency brake,” Bea said.

“Nothing’s stopping you from being both!” Gregg said. He spread his arms. “I mean, what’s this right here?”

“Mm.” Bea looked back out the window. The dark was coming and with it the world outside started to fade from view. The window was reflecting more of the inside of the restaurant. She was looking at her reflection. Tired, hunched, cheek resting on one hand. “I suppose.”

“I’m Gregg’s brakes,” Angus said.

Bea looked back at him. “Seriously?”

Angus shrugged. “I know how we work is all. I don’t mind it. Do you?”

“I guess that’s something I’m still trying to figure out,” Bea said, shrugging as well.

“That’s fair. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. Some people need projects. Some people _are_ projects. It’s just a matter of getting a good match.”

“Seems fatalistic. Wouldn’t that mean you’re doomed to be the responsible one?”

“I think that ultimately, whether I like it or not, I don’t know how else to be,” said Angus. “But it’s just a hypothesis. It’s not like I know shit about relationships at the end of the day.”

“No dude. It is the end of the day and you are suave as hell,” said Gregg.

“Heh.”

Bea felt a tired smile tug at her face. She turned to look at the window again and stared at herself in thought.

~~~

Mae had a plan now and her brain was whirling with ideas relating to the plan. Was this how Gregg and Angus felt with their plan? If so no wonder they had a plan! It felt pretty good! There was still that fizzing sensation in her head, but it felt… directed. Like the swarm of bees taking residence in her skull had an objective in mind, something to sting that wasn’t her dang brain.

She walked up the steps to her home. She stopped in front of the door and looked. Just looked. It occurred to her that the moments where she would be doing this were suddenly very limited. Well, they were limited one way or another, really. But the prospect of losing the house put a finality to moments like these that was smothering. It made her want to open her mouth and… scream? Or…

“Hey, house.”

She closed her eyes and winced. She desperately hoped nobody had heard but she was too embarrassed to actually check.

“I’m talking to the house now. This is a thing that’s happening. I’m standing at the front door and talking to the house. This is where I’m at in my head.”

She let out a long breath. “Okay. No stopping now. Once you start talking to houses, you basically commit yourself to being fully crazy. This is probably true. So… hey. House. It’s Mae. I basically, like, lived in you since I was born. So. Thanks for that.”

She looked up at the door frame for the entrance. “I think places can have emotions. I like, actually think that. I mean, I’m no globetrotting asshole but I’ve been in, uh, train depots and bus stations and I was in an airport once when we went on that vacation to Florida. And it’s like, all those people who go to those places, and they meet family that they haven’t seen in years. Or they say goodbye for probably the last time. All that joy and sadness just coming off everybody like the light of stars. I think places soak those emotions up. So it’s like, feelings radiation. Like if you spend time in those places you can feel it. Arrivals and departures. People leave behind chunks of themselves like ghosts that haunt the place. But it’s not the ghosts of lives it’s the ghosts of feelings. And… if those places can soak up those feelings then homes definitely can. So… Yeah. I think you can feel. Or you can echo feelings. I guess. Because we’ve just been here living in you so long.”

Mae flexed her fingers and rocked on her feet. “So I just wanna say thank you. Because I dunno what’s gonna happen. Maybe we keep you, maybe we don’t. It all seems, like, dependent on things beyond our control. That’s a thing that I’ve had to grapple with. Just how out of control our lives really are. So… yeah. It’s kind of a shitty situation. But. Yeah.”

She saw movement from the corner of her eyes.

“You talking to your front door, lil Borowski?”

Mae slumped over and sighed. She turned to see her neighbor leaning on his own patio. “No, Mr. Twigmeyer. I’ve got one of those earpieces that let me talk to someone over the phone but nobody realizes it so I just look like a crazy person.”

“Fancy. Don’t forget about us little people when you’re talking to your home over the phone.”

“I won’t. Got too much Possum Springs in me to forget. Might as well ask me to forget about my lungs.”

“Heh. Lungs are the first to go,” said Mr. Twigmeyer. “Whether it’s ‘cause you worked in the mines or you breathed in too much asbestos from back in the day or you live in one of them trailers that had the bad formaldehyde walls. This town goes for the lungs.”

“Wow. That’s, uh, dark.”

Mr. Twigmeyer gave her an old look. “We all get in a dark mood from time to time. Guess it helps us appreciate the other times.”

“Okay. Well. Good night, Mr. Twigmeyer.”

“Good night, Mae.”

She unlocked the door and stepped into the living room.

“Hey, kitten.”

“Hey,” said Mae. There was a decent chance that her father, sitting as he was in front of the television, had heard her talking. Even moreso since the TV wasn’t even on. Just sitting in the living room with the TV off. Oh geez.

“You… doing okay? Dad?”

“Oh, yeah.” He said in a forced, breezy tone.

Which was a nice out for Mae to take. A good opportunity to say ‘well, good night!’ and hop up the stairs to her room. She considered the out. Appreciated it. Then she walked to the couch and sat next to her dad. This seemed like another aspect of adulthood Mae was never going to enjoy. The conversation you don’t want to have but have anyway.

“So. Uh. How are things going with the house?” she said.

Her father gave her a look. She could see the debate in his eyes. When his internal argument came to a conclusion he deflated, slouching into the couch as if he could sink into the cushions. “Not great, kitten.”

“Are we gonna get kicked out?”

“Not for a while yet, no. Your mother and I have been budgeting pretty carefully. We still have some time yet in this place. But it’s on the horizon.” He heaved a great sigh and put his hand on Mae’s head. “It’s just life, you know?”

“I’m starting to.” Mae shifted towards him. “So. Like. What would it take? To keep this place?”

“Money’s a good start.”

She was starting to hate that word. Money sucked. She had completely forgotten to talk to Gregg about that Snack Falcon job. Wow that was dumb. And now she was avoiding him because she had a surprise. That was… unbelievably dumb. Holy crap. Mae ground her teeth together. “I. Um. May have a new job lined up. One that pays better than Taco Buck.”

“That’s great to hear, kitten.”

“And I could help out!”

“No, Mae.”

“But —”

“We’ve all discussed this. We want you to use that money to help yourself,” said her father. “Not throw it away on a lost cause.”

 _Sometimes I feel like I’m the lost cause_. She was able to keep that thought to herself, for which she was thankful. “But —”

“Mae, at the end of the day, this is a house. A building. It’s not a member of the family. It’s not you. It’s not your mother. It’s not a life. Even if we end up moving into an apartment, the important thing is that we’re still a family. Okay? So I don’t want you putting your money into it when you could use that money to help yourself and sock a little bit of it away for a future. Okay?”

“Okay,” said Mae. “Okay, okay, okay. But… if I can’t… then what else could be done?”

“The obvious solution is better pay and hours at my job, but that’s never going to happen. Not without a union to fight for us workers at the Ham Panther. I been talking to a regional union organizer, but everyone at work is afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

Mr. Borowski shrugged. “Lots of things. People like the managers at the Ham Panther have worked a long time fear-mongering about unions, and they’ve pretty much done a good job, much as I hate to say it. Saying all sortsa bad stuff’ll happen if anyone tries to unionize. Nobody wants to risk it if it they think it’ll cost them their job or put a black mark on their resume or what-have-you.”

“Oh.”

“The irony is that we’re gonna lose jobs anyway. There’s already talk of self-checkout lanes. Which means the folks working the registers are gonna be wiped out. Even when we’re staring death straight in the face we’re too scared to do something about it.” His free hand gripped at the fabric of the armrest.

“At least that won’t happen to you,” said Mae.

“Heh. Oh, don’t think there isn’t someone out there figuring out a robot that makes deli-cut meats to order. And even if that don’t happen, it’s not about saving my own hide. We all need to organize. Everyone together, for the sake of standin’ up to our bosses.”

“Oh.”

“Folks just… I dunno, Mae. They need to remember what they had. What they lost. What they’re continuin’ to lose. And they need to get angry about it but in a way that’s _useful_. Seen lotsa folks blamin’ immigrants or such for their problems but it ain’t that. Not like Possum Springs is the go-to place for new blood anyway. We just gotta… well, even if we do organize there’s still time needed for negotiations and no guarantee of that workin’ out. So who knows. Just gotta keep tryin’, right?”

Mae looked down at her knees. “Yeah.”

“Don’t you worry. Even if the worse comes of it, this house is just a place.”

“Okay.” She slid off the couch. “Good night, dad.”

“Night, kitten.”

She walked up the stairs. Stairs she’d been up and down more times than she could count. She heard the echoing _tick tock_ of her grandfather’s grandfather clock. She still heard the hurt in her father’s voice. _Just a place_. But the lie in the words was as audible as the ancient clock’s gearworks. This house was just a place in the sense that the grandfather clock was just a clock. It was a piece of family. Losing it was…

The idea was too big for Mae’s head to encompass in a single thought. It was a lot of things.

When she reached her room, she didn’t wake her laptop up to check for messages. She fell on her futon and into sleep.

~~~

“I’m officially concerned, Angus,” Bea said as she leaned against the counter of the Ol’ Pickaxe. The morning light was peaking over the hills surrounding the town. Mae hadn’t answered her messages. Maybe not unusual, but distressing when put in the context of previous events.

“Well I’m not gonna tell you to not be concerned,” said Angus. “If that’s how you feel then that’s how you feel. The only question really is what you plan on doing about it.”

“I could use my nail gun and pin her to a wall long enough to be interrogated.”

“I feel like that’s not the manufacturer’s suggested use for their product.”

“Don’t tell them, then.”

“Seriously though.”

Bea threw one hand up in exasperation. “Mae won’t talk to me and I don’t even know why.”

“Gregg thinks she’s avoiding him too. So I’m sure it’s not personal.”

“It better not be. But I do have a plan.”

~~~

Bea had been closing the store more and more often. It wasn’t something she did lightly, though a voice in her head said she shouldn’t be doing it at all. But she knew Mae well enough and if she played this right she would only be closing the store for an _acceptable_ amount of time, where ‘acceptable’ was a completely arbitrary variable whose value was assigned by an equation that resolved to _because I said so_. Mae only ever poked her head out during the slowest business hours anyway.

Standing in front of her store, looking down the street and only entering the Pickaxe to deal with a customer, Bea’s patience was awarded eventually when she spied Mae walking up the hill into town. Bea kept herself concealed, unmoved by the occasional odd glance she got from pedestrians. She watched as Mae looked up at the power lines that ran above the street.

Doing her best to keep Mae in view, Bea reached for the shop door and locked it. She had already flipped the sign to “CLOSED.” Time to track down her —

“Yo, Bea! What’re you doing?”

Bea jumped into the air. She didn’t think that was an actual thing in real life, that it only happened in cartoons, but she actually jumped, both feet off the ground, at the voice behind her. She landed and spun around. It was Gregg.

“Don’t do that!” she said.

“I’m just talkin’! I’m walking, minding my own business —”

“Don’t you have work?”

“Don’t you?”

Bea’s eyes narrowed. She had never actually hung out with Gregg. The only times they were together was when Angus or Mae were involved. And she was sure he’s probably a stand up kind of guy. She had seen direct evidence for that. He had shot someone for the sake of a friend. That meant something. So maybe not hanging out with him was her loss completely. She could accept that. Unfortunately she didn’t have time now to correct that oversight.

“Whatever. Gregg, I’m trying to — oh goddammit.” Bea had turned to get a bead on Mae again and she wasn’t there. She saw the power line in the distance twanging in a way that couldn’t be accounted for by the wind, but no Mae. She had lost her. “Are you serious!”

“What? What’s going on?”

“I was… I was trying to find out where Mae’s been running off to and I saw her just now. Then she disappeared! When did she get all sneaky?”

“Oh, that’s easy dude, she’s in the office building. The one with the call center on the first floor.”

“How the hell do you know?”

“I like, know where Mae is. All the time. I have Maedar”

Bea gave him a flat look.

“One time, when I was like, five, me and Mae were at the playground and she was climbing up the tower when she lost her grip and fell right on top of me,” said Gregg. “She landed kind of hard on her face and she lost a baby tooth. It fell out of her mouth directly into mine. And before I even knew it, I swallowed her tooth.”

“Oh my god,” said Bea.

“Yeah. According to some cultures, I basically own a part of her soul. So I just _know_.”

Bea tilted her head from one side to the other. Gregg just wiggled his eyebrows. 

“ _Spoooooooky_ ,” he said.

“You’re bullshitting me.”

“Ha ha, totally, dude. I saw her climb through a window on the fourth floor.”

“Great,” Bea said. “I’ve been in the building before to do repairs. There’s, like, a desk where you have to check in and everything.”

Gregg looked at her and he was smiling. A big, pointy smile. “Holy crap this is so exciting. You know what that means, right?”

“Uh. I have to wait for her to come out?”

“No, dude. It means you and me, we’re gonna do _crimes_.”

Bea leaned away. “Um. No. Thanks.”

“Suit yourself,” Gregg said with a shrug. “But I gotta chase down Mae to see if she wants my job or not, so I’m gonna go see her anyway. Later dude!”

He walked down the street towards the office building. Bea watched him, fidgeting and with her mouth twisted into a frown. Finally, she sighed and chased after him. “Wait up!”

Gregg spun around and walked backwards, smiling at Bea. “Dude this is so exciting. You and me never done crimes together.”

“I can’t help but feel that might be for a reason.” Bea jogged up alongside him. “I mean —”

“Probably because you’d say something like —”

“— If you get in trouble Angus will never forgive me.”

“— That.” Gregg smiled toothily at Bea while she glared back. “I’m an adult, Bea. I get to decide what it is I do.”

“Ugh.” Bea put a cigarette in her mouth and lit it. “And what are you going to do to find Mae?”

“Easy. We get past security and up to the upper floors.”

“How — Gregg, wait!”

They came to the front of the office building, its ground floor windows were tinted out and had Telezoft logos printed over it. A sullen smattering of break-time call center workers lurked at the entrance, absorbing precious sunlight and fresh air before once again delving into call center hell.

Without stopping, Gregg went up to the door and opened it. He nodded to the workers as he passed by. “Come on, dude,” he said to Bea. She dropped her cigarette into a standing ashtray. As the door closed behind them he leaned in and whispered conspiratorially. “You’ve been in here before, right? To do repair stuff? You’re the inside woman.”

“I am not the inside woman. Gregg, the elevators are up ahead.”

“See?”

Bea bit back her retort. They were in a corridor and branching from the left and right were the Telezoft cubicles, the shapes of employees distorted by frosted glass that ran along the sides of the hall. Straight ahead was a semi-circle desk with a receptionist. Beside him on the wall was a felt letter board that served as the office building’s directory: Telezoft first floor, elevators and stairs to the right, restrooms to the left and then… not much else.

A few small businesses took up space in the upper floors, like wounded animals huddled in corners, but much of the building was just storage space waiting to be leased out.

“Just imagine the waiting list of all the companies looking to lease this prime real estate,” Bea said as they approached the receptionist. “I hear Google and Amazon are in a bidding war for the space on the second floor where the dead rat smell really accentuates the small town tech chique that’s in vogue these days.”

“I could get a job taking calls,” Gregg said as he peered through the obscured glass.

“Really? I always assumed it was pretty soul-crushing.”

“I mean, with my skill set I can’t be picky. I don’t want a street job, like when I saw a dude in Bright Harbor standing at a city corner handing out glossy dance club fliers with weird epic manifestos about how electronic dance music will save the world.”

Bea let out a dry chuckle. “With the world the way it is I think I’d give anything a shot.”

“The wub-wubs will totally end global warming, dude.”

They closed on the reception desk and the guy behind it had a measure of unwarranted alertness that told Bea that they weren’t just going to sneak right on by.

“Act like you belong here,” Gregg whispered. “80% of the time people leave you alone if you act like you belong here. Like. 90% of the time. 99% of the time. 99.9 — Just follow my lead.”

“Oh god,” said Bea.

“What’s up, my good bro?” Gregg said loudly, raising his arms to lean on the desk. The receptionist leaned away. “How is another day in the freaking rat race, fellow worker?”

“Um. Excuse me?” said the receptionist. He was sitting at his desk which put him at Gregg’s eye level.

“We… uh, are cool. Don’t worry about it,” said Gregg. He winked and did a finger point. “Muchacho.”

“Okay… can I help you?” the receptionist said dubiously.

Bea wondered if it was possible to crawl inside of herself until she vanished. Instead, she stepped forward and nudged Gregg aside. “Hey,” she said. “Don’t mind this guy. He’s new.”

The receptionist looked up at her. “Oh. Beatrice, right?”

“Yeah. Got a call about a vent that was leaking upstairs, so I’m checking it out.”

“Don’t you need tools?” he said.

Bea remained expressionless as she silently cursed herself. But she rallied. “I’m not carrying them all this way without knowing what the problem is. Gotta make sure it’s more than some guy spilling his water or something.”

The receptionist nodded. “Okay, cool. Let me know how it goes.” He returned to his magazine, instantly disinterested.

Gregg hopped excitedly as they headed towards the elevators. “That was so good!” he whispered fiercely. “You’re so good at crimes!”

“That wasn’t a crime, Gregg. I lied to someone who knows and trusts me on a professional level.”

“To like, trespass! What do you think a crime is?”

Bea shrugged. “I guess I imagined with the way you and Mae keep saying it, it would be more of a big deal.”

“Mostly it’s just vandalism or breaking and entering or that kind of thing.”

“Oh.”

“Now let’s go hang Mae upside down out the window until she talks,” Gregg said.


	5. I Will Unlock Your Ass

Mae tapped her feet as she pondered Mallard. Breaking someone out of prison was probably so much easier if that person were alive and not a decent-sized parade float. Back in his glory days, Mallard would go down the center of town tethered to the back of a truck. There was no getting a truck up here, that was for sure. Still, there had to be _some_ way. Parade floats were meant to move. It was just a question of figuring out how. She needed, like, a window. That she could push Mallard out of. That would probably work. But then he’d get smashed on the ground. So she needed a trampoline, obviously. Germ had a trampoline. But he was way out in the woods. She could probably make a trampoline. What if she stole that banner — oh! A _slingshot_! What if she made a slingshot with the banner and, like, shot… Mallard… no that was a stupid idea. It was cool though.

What if she greased the floors and just kind of… slid Mallard around?

“We need, like, an unreasonable amount of lard. Or grease,” Mae said.

“Ooh! Or powdered sugar!” Lori said.

“Uh. Why?” The two were evidently on wildly different trains of thought.

“It’s this recipe for fake blood: water, sugar, food coloring,” said Lori. “I use it. It’s pretty good.”

“What do we need fake blood for?”

“I was thinking we could put, uh, a lot of it into Mallard’s head? Like in a balloon or something? And then at the right time we pop it and blood will pour out of his mouth and eyes!”

Mae tapped her chin. “Wow, okay, that’s going on the list. First though we need to figure out a way to get him out of this small as hell room.”

She walked over to the partition. It wobbled on its rails as she pushed against it. Undoing the lock that kept it in place turned out to be a big goddamn deal. The partition had seemed weak, like several degrees separate from being actual construction paper. It should have just been a question of how hard she could hit it with a piece of Mallard’s broken-off structural support. Turned out, it was tough as hell. And the lock was some heavy duty shit that like, should've been used in a bank or something. Someone really wanted to keep Mallard locked up. Whoever this was, was a fool. Mallard could not be contained. Life finds a way.

“Maybe Germ can lend me some of his crusties to do some demolition work. But I don’t have a way to pay them. Plus they’re not his to loan out. They’re like, actual people.”

“Is that what you call the people who hop the trains?” said Lori.

“Yeah. Always kinda wondered about what life like that is. I mean, I barely get good sleep when I’m in my own bed. Sleeping in like a train? Not even the part of a train that’s for sleeping but, like, where they put logs or boxes? I can’t deal with that. Putting logs and boxes in a train is still a thing, right? That doesn’t just go away because we have the internet now.”

“I have a hard enough time sleeping while living next to train tracks,” said Lori. “I couldn’t handle actually sleeping on the tracks.”

“Didn’t you tell me you do that once in a while?”

“It’s different!”

“Oh.”

This was going nowhere fast. Mae needed labor. But the only people she knew could help move this thing were the same people she was trying to keep in the dark about it. Life.

The sound of voices interrupted her mope session.

“Okay it’s not a fascist hat but it is an imperial hat.” It was Bea. What the crap was she doing up here?

“That’s, like, different, right?” And Gregg? What the crap is he doing up here _with_ Bea?

“I mean, sure. If you feel like splitting hairs in regards to autocratic regimes that came from the same region of Europe and were like, not even 20 years apart. Fun fact, helmets like that were called the _Pickelhaube_ and _pickel_ is German for ‘pickaxe.’”

“Heh. Pickle.”

“I can already tell you you’re saying the wrong word.”

“’I’m Beatrice and I work at the Ol’ Pickle.’”

“I sure do, Gregg. I sure do.”

Mae looked around the room. “Oh man, why are they here? We need a place to hide!”

“What? What’s going on?” said Lori.

“Or maybe lock the door? Or block it or something! What if we weld it shut?”

“I know how to weld!” said Lori.

“What the… seriously?”

“Yeah! I can arc weld! I have a neighbor who did construction and I wanted to learn how to make a skeleton for this monster idea I had.”

“Nice! Can you weld that door?”

“With what?” Lori said.

“Oh. Right.”

“Mae?” Bea’s voice was muffled through the door.

Mae held her finger up to her lips, pantomiming silence.

“Dude, we could hear you, we know you’re in there,” said Gregg.

“Crap,” said Mae. Then she saw the door open. “ _Shit_.” She lunged at the door and dived through it, forcing Bea and Gregg to step back. She stood between them and the door.

“What the hell?” said Gregg.

“Hey my dudes!” said Mae.

“Mae, what’s going on?” said Bea.

“Um, Mae?” Lori’s said through from the other side of the door. “Can I come out?”

“I swear you people keep kidnapping that poor kid,” said Gregg.

“Mae, what’s behind that door?” said Bea.

“You can’t come in!” said Mae.

“Why?”

“Ugh. Geez. It’s a secret!”

Bea gave her a cool, level glare. “Mae.”

This situation was getting out of Mae’s control. Her mind raced. She wasn’t feeling a lot of options and Bea was giving her _that_ stare. Her eyes darted and her breath quickened. Something in Bea’s expression shifted, softened.

“Mae, please tell us what’s going on?” she said.

“Yeah dude, we’re like, worried and shit,” said Gregg.

This wasn’t even fair. Mae’s shoulders slumped. “Uh. Um. Okay. Bea can come in. But you can’t, Gregg!”

“What?”

“Just trust me, man! Okay?”

Gregg and Bea traded a look. “Let’s just go with it for now,” said Bea.

What followed was a kind of awkward shuffling as Mae let the door open just a crack. Open enough for Lori to slide past, then Bea to slide in, followed by Mae. All along she did her best to keep Gregg from sneaking a peak into the room.

“This is stupid,” said Gregg.

“It will all make sense one day,” said Mae. She winked at him from behind the door than closed it.

“I… uh… now you’re in the other room! Ugh!” said Lori.

Gregg suddenly realized he was alone with some random kid. “Oh goddammit,” he said.

“Go stand at the bottom of the stairs!” Mae yelled from behind the door. “No listening in! I swear these walls are basically cardboard!”

“God. Dammit.”

~~~

Mae watched Bea walk up to the ruin of Mallard with her arms crossed over her chest.

“Huh. So this is where he wound up.”

“Yeah, pretty rad, right?”

“Mhmm.” Bea looked to the freight elevator beyond the recessed partition. “Mae, whatever it is you’re doing, please tell me you’re not trying to keep Gregg and Angus in Possum Springs.”

Mae’s eyes widened. “What? What the hell? No! It isn’t! Is that what you thought I was up to?”

“Kind of hard for me to reach any other conclusion,” Bea said. “You go running off, saying you have a surprise, avoid us all day.”

“So I’m doing some horrible thing to sabotage my friends? That’s kind of a shitty assumption. I’m in a room with a parade float. What could I possibly be doing?”

Bea’s jaw worked as if she were trying out different words before letting them out. Then she tightened her arms around her and sighed. “Okay. I admit, it’s hard for me to imagine just what it is you could possibly do in this situation.”

“But you thought it anyway. Seriously, Bea. That talk we had? On the roof? Like, I get it. I can’t stop them. And when they go I’m going to smile and wave until their car disappears around a corner. I thought it was understood. Guess I thought wrong.”

“I didn’t know, okay? And… I just assumed. God. I’m actually a shitty friend.”

“Whoa, hey,” said Mae. Her tone immediately softened. “What did I say about beating yourself up like that?”

“Uh. To my knowledge you haven’t said anything about that.”

“Oh. Right. Well. You shouldn’t do it! That’s what I’d say. And I said it just now. If anyone’s gonna put you down, it’s me.”

There was a huff of near-laughter from Bea and Mae could see a little bit of a challenging spark in her eye. “That doesn’t make sense. Nobody can beat me up as well as I can.”

“What! That’s not my point!”

“Well _my_ point is that I prefer to let experts handle a job.”

“Rarrrgh Bea! You’re smarter than me so it’s not fair that you use that to argue why you get to hurt yourself with words! That’s like, not cool!”

This time Bea laughed and Mae followed along.

“Really though, I’m sorry I assumed the worst,” said Bea.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m sorry if it felt like I was keeping you out of the loop.”

“Okay I’d really like to stop apologizing at some point.”

“Apologies just mean we’re figuring out the space we can occupy with each other, right?”

“Whatever it is you’re reading that makes you say things like that, please stop. I can’t handle it if you start sounding like a self-help book or something.”

Mae laughed softly. Once she judged Bea was waiting for her, she spoke.

“So, like, I’ve been having this kind of… agitation? For a few days now. Like a fixation or something.”

“Okay,” Bea said in a measured voice. “Is this something that I should stay on top of?”

“N-no, that’s not what I meant. I mean. I don’t think so. No.” Mae was always kind of floored by how prepared Bea was to step up whenever Mae even vaguely hinted towards having an… issue. It mostly never came to anything, because Mae didn’t want to add more obligations on top of the ones Bea already had, but it was very, very nice all the same. “It’s like an impulse to like… Okay, so, I’m not looking to, uh, hurt people, okay?”

“Um. Okay?”

“I just want to put that out there, because that’s probably a thing you might be concerned about.”

“Well it’s nice that we got that out of the way,” said Bea. “How about property damage?”

“Oof.”

“Mae.”

“Look, nobody even cares about Mallard anymore, okay?” Mae gestured to the float. “Look at what they did! So like, I’ve been agitated, okay? Like I’ve been having thoughts that I didn’t know how to deal with… and… my hands!”

“Your hands.”

“Like, I’ve felt like I wanted to grab something and at first I was worried because it was like, I wanted to grab something to hurt someone with? Like, that was my first thought. But then I talked with Selmers and I’ve been thinking and I think this feeling is like, a need to, express myself? Somehow?”

“I’m kind of worried that your urge for self-expression was first interpreted as an urge for violence.”

Mae put her hands on her hips and puffed up her chest. “What can I say? I make beating shit up an art!”

“Heh. Okay, Maeday. You don’t have to convince me.”

“What?”

“I came in here worried, but now I’m just… interested.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I wanna see what you do. And if you still want it to be a surprise, then I’ll get out of your way, okay?”

“Oh… okay. Actually, uh…”

“Yeah, Mae?”

“I kind of need some help?”

“Oh for god sakes.”

~~~

“No way, dude, you can’t just make _anything_ scary. Only scary things are scary.”

Gregg sat at the bottom of the steps, elbows on knees and head resting in his hands. He gave Lori a cool look as she puffed her cheeks up at this outrage.

“That’s not true!” she said. “Scary things are barely even scary if you use them wrong. You have to, uh, like, um, use things right! If you do, then anything _can_ be scary!”

“You can’t make a…” Gregg cast around. His eyes landed on the plastic wreaths, covered in dust. “You can’t make flowers scary. They’re the definition of not scary.”

“I can totally make flowers scary!”

“Let’s see it, kid.”

Lori huffed. Gregg watched as she turned to look at the old, dusty flowers. She dragged a box of them out of the pile, gave Gregg one last look, then turned her back to him as she worked.

It was actually pretty freaking adorable, Gregg thought. The idea of being left alone with some dang teenager initially had him wishing he could climb into a vent, get stuck and die of starvation. But it turned out this Lori kid was marginally better than a slow death.

He could barely remember being 15. Which was crazy. Six years isn’t that long. What did he even think about when he was 15? Something really dumb and embarrassing that would make him want to find a hole to bury himself in, he was sure. The only logical explanation for why he had a hard time remembering himself from the age was his brain was blanking out the memories as a self-preservation reflex.

Lori seemed to have things mostly figured out for herself though. Gregg didn’t remember much from that time but he was sure that he was not nearly this together. She liked horror movies. She wanted to make horror movies. She already _made_ one. Albeit short. Gregg never had a goal so clear in mind. Not until Angus came up with the Plan. And even then Gregg flaked out every now and then. Lori talked like she had her life planned out herself. Madness. She showed him a stage knife she had made herself over the winter with duct tape and plaster and a spring and some paint. It looked pretty convincing when she stabbed herself in the gut.

And now here she was trying to make flowers scary.

Her back was still turned, but her posture changed. She seemed to crumple in on herself. She shuffled around slowly in halting, jerky motions. Zombie-style. When she faced him, Gregg saw that she had stuffed plastic flowers into her mouth, which was true commitment to a craft if he had ever seen it. How old were those things? And dusty? She had pressed a couple flowers over her eyes too, and a few stuck out from the end of her sleeves and more hung from the neck of her shirt. It was a respectable effort to give an effect like flowers were sprouting from her body.

She made a weird, gutteral moan and blood poured out the corner of her mouth, staining a petal as it dripped from her chin. She made a choking, gagging noise and scrabbled at her mouth with her flower-infested hands.

“Whoa, hey, are you okay?” said Gregg. He moved to stand up.

Lori straightened up and made a triumphant sound. “Ha!” she said after she spat out the flowers, along with some red spittle. She brushed the flowers off her closed eyes and wiped at the blood dribbling from her mouth. “See? You were scared!”

“What? No, dude, I thought you like, bit down on a piece of metal from all that stuff you stuck in your mouth.”

“Still counts!” said Lori. She shed more flowers from off her clothes, then shook the sleeve on her left arm, where she brandished a small plastic capsule full of red liquid.

“You carry fake blood around?” Gregg said.

“I mean. Sometimes. I dunno. I just do.” Lori pocketed the capsule and looked away, fidgeting and suddenly nervous.

“Dude, that’s pretty cool.”

“Oh. Uh. Yeah?” She made a poor effort of hiding the naked yearning for approval in her voice. It was actually super endearing, thought Gregg.

“Yeah, dude.”

“Um. Okay. Okay, okay. Cool.” Lori rocked back and forth on her feet. “I. Um. Really like stuff like this. Like, horror stuff. And special effects props. It’s, uh, cool to figure out.”

“That’s awesome dude.”

“I wanna go to school, and, um, do classes on stuff like this,” said Lori. Her nerves caused her to fidget more and babble. “So I can make, uh, movies and stuff. I think it’d be pretty cool. Um. I know it’s just, like, silly stuff though. I mean, it’s not important or anything, I know.”

“Naw dude,” Gregg cut in. “Don’t be like that. Like, I don’t think anything is really important. Like, objectively.”

“Uh. Really?”

“Yeah.”

“That sounds like it might be bad?” said Lori.

“Not in, like, a ‘nothing matters,’ sense,” Gregg said. “I mean, like, it’s all about the situation. Like, if you have a broken arm then yeah obviously getting a splint for it is more important than, like, eating a pizza or something. I mean, unless the pizza is… look, have you ever heard of the pizza scale? Forget it, I’m getting off track. I just mean that, outside of emergency stuff like that, you’re free to define for yourself what is and isn’t important. Okay?”

“Okay,” Lori said uncertainly. “So…”

“So if it’s important to you, then make it be important. Pour your energy into it. And if other people tell you it’s not worth it, tell ‘em that Greggor says to go to hell.”

“Oh. I suppose that sounds okay.”

“Yeah! That’s how I do. If I wanna do something I pretty much go all in. Blast off to glory!”

“That’s cool.” Lori nodded. Then she nodded with more conviction as if coming to some sort of decision. “Okay, okay, okay, yeah. You’re right. I should definitely do this!”

“Dude, you’re gonna be the valedictorian of horror school.”

“Hee hee.”

“But we gotta get you some experience.”

Lori tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

“I got an idea,” said Gregg, and he smiled.

~~~

“As far as the lock goes, you’re pretty much on your own for that,” Bea said. She got up from where she was kneeling where she had studied the axles that supported Mallard back in his parade heydays. “But I think I can fix his wheels. Honestly it looks like he just needs some screws tightened and some lubricant applied.”

Bea turned to look at Mae. She was nodding and looking at Bea with big, hopeful eyes. Bea rotated her sore shoulder. “Alright, alright. I’ll do it.”

Mae pumped her fists. “Yes! Thank you! Bea I swear you have my complete and utter fealty. Like, if you ever ask me to do something I will make it happen! Anything! Even if you need a body disappeared.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Not gonna mean much if you can’t unlock that partition though.”

“I’ll figure something out.”

“I’m just going to pretend you’re not going to break the shit out of it or whatever.”

“Anything is possible in the world of pretend, Bea.”

“Sure you wanna keep Gregg in the dark about this?”

“Totally. This is for him and Angus. Gregg’s gonna freaking puke his heart out when he sees this.”

They walked to the door and Mae swung it open. There in front of them on the dimly lit platform was Gregg, splayed out on the floor with a great big red stain on his leather jacket and a knife handle sticking out from the center of his chest. He stared unblinkingly at the ceiling and his tongue lolled from the side of his mouth. Kneeling in front of him, Lori held outstretched a blood-stained hand in which she clutched a mass of pulsating, glistening red. She wore the hood of her jacket over her head, casting her eyes in shadow.

“For the glory of the death god!” she intoned in an exaggeratedly deep voice.

“Holy shit,” said Bea.

“Yeah,” said Mae.

“That blood is not gonna come out of the carpet.”

Lori looked at them. Then she looked at Gregg. “They’re not buying it,” she whispered.

“No, dude, don’t break character, it’s cool!” Gregg said.

“Where did you get a fake heart?” said Mae.

“Oh, it’s easy,” Lori said in her normal voice, instantly eager to talk shop. “It’s just a plastic bag filled with whatever junk I have and fake blood. It kind of looks like a heart. Um. If you don’t look too closely. So you guys weren’t scared at all?” She couldn’t help but let her disappointment through.

Mae shrugged. “It’s kind of tame once you see the real thing.”

“What?” said Lori.

“Kind of in poor taste, Gregg,” Bea said.

“What? Too soon?” Gregg said.

“What? What?” said Lori.

Gregg propped himself up on his elbows. The stage knife fell from his chest and Lori quickly scooped it up. “Come on, you guys. This is the second shirt I ruined in so many days. At least appreciate the craft! Lori did good work with what she had on hand.”

“Yeah, that was pretty okay,” said Bea.

Lori practically floated. “Okay! Um. Cool!”

“Yeah, Lori’s pretty cool,” said Mae. “When you get the chance, you should drop by the Ol’ Pickaxe next to the war memorial. Bea sells a bunch of really great murder axes.”

“Mae!” said Bea, “what are you doing?”

“Advertising!”

“You have axes?” Lori was wide-eyed.

“Oh god,” said Bea.

“This kid’s gonna be a film visionary someday,” said Gregg. “Hit me up whenever you need someone to be a corpse or something for your movies. I got acting chops. Ask Bea. I acted in last year’s Harfest. Right Bea?”

“Yeah,” said Bea. “Your performance could definitely be likened to a corpse.”

“I just got freakin’ gutshot,” said Gregg.

“Ha ha,” said Mae. Then she turned to Lori. “Gregg’s leaving soon, so if you still need corpses, me and Bea will totally be there.”

“Uh… yeah… I guess,” said Bea with a shrug. “Well, I’m gonna go back to the Pickaxe. I’ll come by and fix the wheels tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Mae said.

“Yes. Already spent too much time away from the shop today. I’m not budging on this.”

“Alright I guess. I still owe you big.”

“Okay, well, later.”

“Yeah, later dude!” Gregg waved at Mae. Then he turned around and stopped short as Bea looked down at him, unmoving.

“Didn’t you come here for a reason?” Bea said.

Gregg looked at her uncomprehending. Then he gasped. “Oh, duh! Thanks!” He turned to Mae. “Dude, so you gonna work at the Snack Falcon or what?”

“Geez, I keep forgetting!” said Mae. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll totally work at the Snack Falcon! I mean, I need the job.”

“Nice, dude. Look, come by the shop, uh, tomorrow morning, I guess. You and me, we gotta fill out your application.”

Oh god, forms. “Can’t I just throw myself into the sun?” said Mae.

“I think it would actually be easier to fill out an application than to physically reach and then die in the sun.”

“Hm. An unconventional theory,” said Mae. “I suppose I’ll entertain it for your sake.”

“Thanks bro. I’m gonna go back to the shop. I guess it’s possible someone out there has a life and death need for an Angry Pepper Crunchster and is at the Snack Falcon literally right now. Tomorrow morning dawg, don’t forget. I only got so many hours left in this podunk town.”

“Get outta here, city slicker,” Mae said. She was surprised at how she was able to joke about that. Dang for real.

“Um. I’m gonna go home,” said Lori.

“Cool, cool,” said Mae. “Thanks for hanging out, but I guess you got a curfew, huh?”

Lori shrugged. “Not really. But I’m uncomfortable if I’m outside without any fake blood.”

“Oh. Uh. Cool? Later!”

“Bye!”

Mae bounced on her toes. Things were coming together. She still needed to figure how to get Mallard out of the room, and she’d need actual labor to do the moving, but… things were coming together! Who said Mae wasn’t good at making things happen? All she had to do was stare blankly at Mallard until Bea, out of misplaced concern, popped up and solved everything for her! She was basically a natural.

That partition was on her though. She walked over to the lock and peered at it. “What do you think Mallard? I bet I could, like… hit it real hard? I mean that’s basically what I do best.”

“Maybe you just ain’t usin’ the right tools.”

“Gaaaah!” said Mae.

The voice was gruff and gravelly. Mae spun around. A tall, lanky man in flannel with a tool belt slung around his waist stood at the open door. He was slouching with his thumbs in his belt.

“Holy crap dude! Don’t sneak up on a person like that!”

“’Tweren’t sneakin’, the door was open.” When he looked at her Mae saw tired eyes. Tired and old and there was this quality like literally nothing could surprise those eyes. Like, a volcano could burst underneath him and he’d be all like “ain’t that the way?”

“You’re the janitor!” She hadn’t seen him in a while. Not since… that one time when he just dropped her name like it was nothing? Whatever, she was Mae Borowski. Everyone in Possum Springs knows Mae frikkin’ Borowski. Basically a big deal, here.

“I’m the janitor. I fix things.”

“Uh. Yeah. Why are you here?”

“To fix things.”

“I’m almost certain that janitors, uh, clean things?”

“Yep. That too. Not much call for cleanin’ though. Mainly fixin’.”

He pushed past her. He had, like, a weird strong pine smell. Pine cleaner? Maybe. He stopped at the partition. “Hmmm,” he said. “There’ll be a day for cleanin’ soon enough, but for now it’s fixin’.”

“Okay… you gonna be long? I kinda got some important planning to do here.”

“Naw. Easy fix. Barely need me here for it.” He knelt in front of the partition. His eyes on the lock, his hands felt through the small, pointy forest of tools in his belt.

“You probably need to know a lot to be a janitor, huh?” said Mae as she watched him work.

“Oh, a little bit of everything I suppose,” said the Janitor.

“You gotta go to a special school for that?”

“Yup. S’called Living.”

“Heh. Yeah. I suppose there’s not like a school for that. Nobody’s parents ever said ‘you’ll be the first in our family to go to janitor school’ or something and make big plans around it. What’s it like? Janitoring?”

“It’s a lot like life, come to think of it. Both’ll take you funny places, and you’re never quite sure what you’ll be doin’ there,” said the Janitor. “Sometimes you think you’re doin’ one thing but wind up you’re doin’ something else entirely. And you ain’t even aware ‘till well after the fact.”

“Huh. That’s… interesting. So… uh. Huh.” Mae didn’t quite no what to say to that. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing a person would have a response for.

“Oof,” said the Janitor as he stood up from his kneeling position. Mae could hear his knees crack. “Welp. That’ll do it.” He gave the partition an experimental tug and it slid open, gliding as if it were brand new.

Mae boggled. “Wait… did you seriously just… I’ve been needing that thing open like all day!”

“S’what I was here to fix, yeppers.”

“Buh… who told you to? I mean, nobody comes up here! This place is the tomb of Mallard! I’m the only one who knows about it!”

“Ain’t a tomb, just a place for things what ain’t got no use,” said the Janitor. He made towards the exit. When he reached the door he stopped and gave Mae a look. “Best be findin’ someone who can help you,” he said. “Not much time before spring is officially here.”

Then he left.

Mae stood, eyes wide, mouth agog. “Hey! You just wait a damn minute! How did you know —” She ran to the door and came face-to-face with a very deserted hallway.

She searched. She tried the fire escape. Still locked in defiance of all safety laws. The other doors lead nowhere. She was alone. “Next time, I’m gonna like, put a bear trap behind me!” she called out into the emptiness. “Let’s see you try this disappearing shit with spring-loaded jagged metal sunk into your femur!”

When she returned to Mallards tomb — screw that guy, it _was_ a tomb, she noticed that the red stain left by Gregg and Lori’s improv ritual sacrifice was gone. Weird janitor but really good at the job, apparently.

When she tried it, the partition glided open and it was smooth as silk. Beyond, she could see a corridor lined with similar partitions that presumably led to other storage spaces. The corridor ended with a huge, rattly looking freight elevator with an accordion gate and a dangling yellow phosphor bulb. Way big enough to transport Mallard.

“Well that’s a hell of a thing,” Mae said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my head, Lori is a horror movie prop MacGuyver. She thinks about ways to make horror effects, fake body parts and murder weapons out of anything around her and she thinks about this, like, constantly.


	6. IIIIII'm Gonna Head Out

Bea set the toolbox down at her feet and then sat herself down. She was level with Mallard’s wheel. It wasn’t really broken, so much as someone had detached it from the axle. Nothing a few heavy-duty bolts couldn’t fix. Then a little grease to make sure everything worked together. Now that the receptionist knew to expect her, getting up here hadn't been a problem. Was there anyone even in charge of this building? She was beginning to see why Mae and Gregg ran all over town acting as if they could do whatever they wanted. It didn’t seem like anyone in power gave a shit.

She hummed idly to herself. She hated the Pickaxe. Hated the obligations, hated the time it took from her life, hated how it perpetually hounded her with one task or another just to keep everything afloat. But if she had to say one good thing about her whole situation as it stood right now, it was moments like this. When it was just her, looking at a problem with the tools at her side that would fix it. Her life might be in pieces but this thing in front of her she could put back together. It was a close approximation to a good feeling.

Yawning at the early hour, she arranged her nuts and bolts into neat little lines, pulled out her wrench, then set to work.

Her mind wandered in a meditative way, drifting from the repairs to stray thoughts. She had no idea what it was Mae saw in this thing. They used to watch the Spring Parade together, back before the whole kid-crushing fiasco put it on ice. Aside from that particular episode Bea didn’t have especially strong feelings for the parade or for this float, so she wondered why Mae did.

Was it purely nostalgia? Did she just want something ridiculous to steal? Or was it some inscrutable Mae thing? Bea didn’t much like surprises, but at least now she knew Mae was planning _something_. She just needed to make sure that she had a quick exit available when that something happened. Preferably one that gave her a good vantage point of ground zero.

As Bea aligned the wheel to the axle it occurred to her that this was the very same wheel that crushed that poor kid’s legs all those years ago. And now that she was thinking it, the thought refused to leave her head. If Mallard were a living thing, like a dog that had mauled someone, they would have put it down in some kennel. Instead they had kept the wheel and now she was working on it. She wondered if she made a close examination she’d be able to see some trace of the attack. Accident. She meant accident. Because a parade float can’t attack people. Attacks require intention and parade floats can’t have intentions. That would be silly.

Bea looked up at the blank eyes of Mallard. She very suddenly got the feeling it wasn’t nearly as inanimate as she thought it was. Then she shivered, cursed in the silence and forced herself to get back to work. Spooky shit like that never used to occur to her. Mae’s the one who believes in ghosts and all that. Was that what all this was about? Was it a ghost thing? No. Get a grip. God, if Mae handed her a gift-wrapped present she’d try to run it through an x-ray machine or something. She really needed to just not worry. It wasn’t as if she had a shortage of things to worry about.

She tightened the final bolt with a twist of her wrench, then applied grease. She gave the wheel an experimental turn, definitely not checking for blood or bits of leg bone, no sir.

Mallard had been propped up against the wall. With the wheel fixed, Bea could push the float over so that it would stand upright. She could leave it as it was, but she had a nightmare vision of Mae trying to tip the float over herself. No, best to do it now. That way she could check the other wheel, which had been taking the bulk of the float's weight.

Wedging herself between the float and the wall, Bea pushed. It didn’t require all that much force before it teetered over and made a terrible sound on impact. She was reasonably sure no one was on the floor below, so she was probably okay. _God, listen to yourself,_ she thought. _Mae is really rubbing off on you_. She pushed the troubling thought away and did a walkaround.

Well, the wheels were kind of fouled up, but they both looked secure. Assuming that Mae wasn’t going to take it _too_ far.

She looked up at Mallard. Eyes blank, beak open mid-quack. Faded colors, cracked plaster and paper mache. Dust that had been undisturbed for swirled around it in cascades that get caught in the low light. It gave Bea a sense that she had disturbed the rest of something that should have been left to sleep. Like when Mae had opened up the sinkhole under Joe Shade’s grave.

Bea frowned. Spooky thoughts again. Get a grip.

She collected up her tools, ready to leave. She hesitated at the door and turned back. She pushed one of the boxes over the threadbare carpet and wedged it against Mallard’s good wheel. There. Now there won’t be any attacks — accidents. Accidents, goddammit.

She closed the door behind her, holding her wrench tightly in one hand all the while telling herself it definitely wasn't just in case.

~~~

A couple hours after her repairs, Bea was leaning against the counter of her shop when Mae burst through the door.

“Whoa, hey, careful,” said Bea.

“Thank you _so_ much!” Mae said. “You are like, the tool wizard!”

“Not sure how to take that.”

“As a compliment.”

“Ha ha. Okay. Mae, you have to be careful. It’s not like I’m a certified float repair technician or something. I can’t guarantee that the fix will last through too much wear.”

“I will respect the power of Mallard, Bea.”

“Mostly just don’t get run over.”

“Okay, okay. I gotta make, uh, arrangements. But seriously Bea, thank you! You did it so early too!”

“Mhm. Have you talked to Gregg?”

“Wha? Oh, yeah. That’s all taken care of. Gottagobye!” She waved the question away, like locking down a job wasn't a big deal.

Bea tamped down the little kernel of worry that formed in the pit of her stomach. At a certain point, Mae couldn’t be her problem. Angus could say she was Mae’s brakes all he wanted, that didn’t make it true. At the least, she wasn’t going to be Mae’s babysitter.

More time passed before she got her next visitor. Angus stepped through the door and did his little hat doff, an action that was a blend of irony, endearment and just a touch of self-inflicted embarrassment. Angus in a gesture.

“I have formally quit my job,” he said.

“And with, what, two days to spare? What ever shall you do with yourself?” said Bea.

“If this were different circumstances, I’d be playing video games in my underwear. But my computer is boxed up.”

“You could sit in front of the box and just imagine. Imagine all the good pantsless game times.”

“The naked gaming ungamed, lost forever, moments never to be recovered.”

“These are the little tragedies that make up the bulk of our lives,” said Bea. “The tears too ephemeral to shed. Evaporating before they even leave their ducts, creating a cloud of sadness that lingers ‘round our heads. A miasma of tears.”

“Miasma of Tears is going to be the name of my debut witch house album.”

“Ten tracks of ten hours of crying, a drum machine and an organ put through a wobbly bass filter.”

“Heh heh. I’d never have a future doing that without the best digital music composer in Possum Springs,” said Angus

“Pretty sure a literal dead owl decomposing on a keyboard could make a serious run for that title,” said Bea, who could take any compliment aimed at her and turn it into an extinction-level event.

“And be an excellent album cover,” said Angus, who knew this about her and had accepted it long ago.

“Hah,” said Bea. “So what’s up?”

“Just wanted to hang out. Relax.”

“Not one day unemployed and you’re already lurking around my shop,” Bea said with a smile. “You’re basically Mae now.”

“I learn my slacking from the best. Seriously she puts a lot of effort into it. She’s been running around the other end of town all morning.”

Bea frowned. “Really? I figured she’d beeline it to Gregg and then sleep in or something.”

Shaking his head, Angus studied a shelf full of nails. “Nope. Gregg said right after she filled out her application she went to the old Food Donkey. Then she was in the trolley tunnel.”

“Huh.” Bea didn’t know what to think about this. “Well. It’ll be interesting to see what she’s up to.”

“You’re not concerned?”

“I think there are times where we should all just stand back and let Mae do her thing.”

“That’s a bit of a change from before. Like, a complete opposite change.”

Idly flicking at a bit of receipt paper sticking out of the cash register, Bea sighed. “Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to crowd her. Kinda been making assumptions about her that turned out to be mostly in my head. And… I guess I’ve been thinking of what you said earlier. About me being… her brakes? I guess?”

“Yeah?”

“Still don’t know how I feel about that. Still sounds like an obligation to me. Like, being a parent. Like. I don’t know. I don’t want this thing we have to… become, like, co-dependent? I guess?”

“In what way?”

“Like, a thing where she needs me to be her conscience, or whatever. Because I know enough about myself where I can see that being attractive. Because lord knows I’m into telling other people the way they ought to behave. Policing their lifestyle. It seems like a trap I could definitely fall into. You know how you’re watching a movie or you’re reading a book, and a character does something stupid that you can see is stupid?”

“Yeah, most def.”

“That always makes me so mad. Even though it’s a stupid thing to be mad about. And it’s terrible enough that I get like that with people who don’t even exist. I don’t want to be like that in the real world.”

Angus tilted his head and Bea watched him. She could practically hear his neurons firing. It was rare for her to solicit advice from someone else, but with Angus she waited patiently.

“Okay,” he said.

“And?” she said.

“Oh. Uh. Did you want my opinion?”

She slumped over the counter. “Yes. Yes I did.”

“Well. I think you’re being overly pessimistic.”

“What, me? Pessimistic? Base slander.”

“Ha ha ha, okay, yes. But I think you’re going straight to, uh, the worst case scenario. Like, I can see what you mean when you say this could go in an unhealthy direction for both of you but that’s like, every relationship. Everyone needs a voice outside of themselves to give them perspective and that’s all I really meant. It’s when it comes at a cost, or becomes destructive, is when you worry. Like, compromise is a thing that needs to happen but the idea is that what comes out of it is greater than the whole. Like an alloy.”

“So we’ll just… not be terrible for and to each other?”

“I think you’re both smart enough to avoid the kind of pitfalls you’re afraid of. And you both care enough to work out problems that you do come across.”

Bea huffed. “I think you have a faith in people that I lack, Angus. But… thanks. That’s nice to hear. So what about you?”

“What about me?”

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed you came in here and been talking about me and Mae the entire time. What about you? How are you feeling, Angus?”

“Oh. Ha ha. You know. Nervous. Excited. Kinda terrified. Maybe I was talking about you guys cuz of the terror thing. Keep my mind off it. If I still had access to all my kitchen shit I would be making, like, so many cakes or something. Brownies up to my eyeballs.”

“I’d say there’s nothing to be terrified about but I’m not the one moving to a new place here.”

“You’ve done it before.”

“When I was like, a kid. I think the stresses change as you age. From ‘oh no, how do I make friends’ to ‘oh no, how do I not end up on the street.’” Bea saw Angus’ expression blanch. “Not that that’s going to happen to you,” she added hastily.

“Heh. It’s cool. That is definitely a concern that is on my mind. But, you know, I’ve done what I can. We can afford to coast for a little while on what we have. Find jobs in the meantime.”

“I think the thing I hate the most is — no, nevermind,” said Bea.

“What?”

“It’s nothing.”

“I’ll hear whatever you've got to say, Bea.”

“I was just gonna say, if I were in your situation, the thing I’d hate the most is the uncertainty.”

“It does suck, yeah,” said Angus.

“But right when I was saying it, I realized that’s not the thing I’d hate the most. The worst would be to be stuck here. In this town. With no way out.”

“Yeah,” Angus said with a heavy breath. “When you put it like that, it makes all the fear and uncertainty worth it.”

“Yeah.” Bea leaned against the wall and looked out past Angus, past the windows, into the town. “You know I’m gonna miss you, right? Like. Kind of a lot. Occurred to me that I haven’t actually said that to you.”

“I think I got the sense, though.”

“Yeah, but I should at least say it to you. So it can be, like, official.”

“I shall record it in the minutes," Angus said primly. "Right between our debrief on the day’s agenda of being existentially afraid of life and wistfully nostalgic of this dump of a town. I’ll pencil in a mid-meeting break for cucumber sandwiches. It is now official.”

“Good meeting everyone,” Bea said. “I feel like we really made some headway re: being sad and weird at each other.”

“It’s really been a productive few days for that,” said Angus. “Our core synergies are really shifting the paradigm.” 

“Quotas have been met, expect bonuses all around and our Longest Night office party will be — you know what, I think this joke has gone on long enough.”

“It was good until it wasn’t,” Angus said.

“Agreed.”

“Okay, I’m gonna wander around some more. I’ll try to check in with you later.”

“Cool,” said Bea. “Take it easy out there. You deserve a break.”

Angus hesitated as if he had something he wanted to say. A moment later, he gave her another hat doff, and left the shop.

Bea put her elbows on the counter and let out a long breath.

Not long after, she started getting glimpses of Mae. It would be from the corner of her eye initially, while she was putting away inventory or balancing and re-balancing the register. As she learned to keep a watch for it, she became more prepared to catch a better look at Mae as she flashed past the windows of the Ol’ Pickaxe.

She was often carrying something. Bea mostly saw her with bundles wrapped in brown paper. Or carrying cardboard boxes. At one point she was hauling a bright orange nylon rope, coiled around her shoulders and neck and waist like an out-of-control python. Bea caught her on that trip, as she was too tangled up to move as fast as before.

“Mae! What are you doing?” she said, hanging half out the door and shouting out into the street.

“All part of my surprise!” Mae said, spinning around and walking backwards. “I’mma talk to everyone tonight, so like, Party Barn? I already found the others and they’re cool about it!”

“Okay!” said Bea. “Just don’t do anything arrest-worthy!”

“I stole this rope from a sinkhole inspection crew!” Mae said. She waved and went back to running.

Bea shook her head. After that she didn’t bother with Mae’s exploits. If anything she was so impressed with the fact that Mae had a plan and was keeping to it that she couldn’t bear to get in the way. She needed to see this happen just as much as Mae apparently needed to make it happen.

Left to do little else with herself except stand in the shop, Bea crossed her arms and watched the clock and waited for the evening.

~~~

Though she was anticipating Mae's... meeting or whatever, Bea did not close the Pickaxe early. It would set a bad precedent. Instead she forced herself to wait patiently and once closing time ticked over she was out the door and locking it for the end of the day. As she did, she heard voices fading in from down the sidewalk.

“Naw, kid. You shouldn’t worry about shit like having weird thoughts or whatever. None of that matters once you get outta high school anyway.”

“Uh. Oh. Really?”

Bea looked to her side. It was Lori. And next to her, oh, she was familiar.

“Look, kid,” said Selma. “I been through a lot, but you don’t need to be through much of anything to realize that all that stuff you used to think was important in high school is basically inconsequential. It’s like, I know you kind of don’t believe me. Because I didn’t believe old people when they told me the same thing at your age. You know, like, glamours? Like the spells?”

“Um. Not really?”

“It’s like fairy magic. That casts an illusion over you that makes you see things that aren’t there. That’s what all that high school drama is. And then as soon as you graduate, it’s like the spell breaks. And only then do you realize that it doesn't matter and never mattered. It’s like a curse.”

“High school is a curse,” said Lori.

“Yeah.”

“Hm.” Lori seemed to give the idea serious thought.

Selma came to a stop as they approached Bea. “Oh, hey. Beatrice, right?”

“Yeah. Selma?” said Bea. Was this a situation where you shake hands? Where you don’t really know someone but you saw them before and maybe sometimes around town? No. Probably not. Bea nodded at Selma instead and endeavored to look social or whatever. “I saw you once. At the library. You were doing poetry. It was really good. Um. Call me Bea.”

“Yeah. I remember you. Thanks. You hang out with Mae, but we never really met.”

“Heh, yeah.” Bea gestured half-heartedly at the shop. “Pretty much chained to this place, uh, all the time.”

“I dig it. There’s worse places to be stuck at.”

“That’s true I suppose,” said Bea, which was about as far down that road she was willing to go.

“So, Mae told us to go to the Party Barn for some kind of meeting?” said Selma. “She said to make sure you were… uh… not dead?”

“Was that in doubt?” said Bea. She had assumed by ‘others’ Mae had meant Gregg and Angus. The definition of ‘others’ was changing.

“Mae’s strange.”

“Not inaccurate,” said Bea.

“She’s been running around all over the place!” said Lori. “She’s been sneaking people into the building to move the giant duck!”

Bea looked at her. “What? How?”

“Like, that big elevator opens to the back of the building and nobody is ever there. It’s just an alley for garbage trucks. She’s getting a bunch of people from school to pull the duck out!”

Now she was wrangling teenagers? “What the hell, Mae?” Bea said. “Well, let’s not be late.”

~~~

“I know you aren’t religious cap’n but you still oughta check out those pretzels,” Gregg was saying as Bea opened the door. “Like, they’re basically so good you’ll die.” He and Angus sat on the floor, cross-legged and facing each other.

“I already promised you I wasn't going to die. Also it feels wrong to go to church just to take their food,” said Angus.

“Think of it like stealing from a church!”

“Just because I don’t do churches doesn’t mean I actively want to hurt them, Gregg.”

“I’ll save a few for you, then. Actually, I should take a bunch! For when we’re on the road. Oh, wow. That hadn’t occurred to me ‘till just now!”

“Pretzels taste best hot,” said Germ from where he sat on the Party Barn stage. “It’s a basic fact. Hot and soft.”

“We make do with what we can, buddy.”

“I make do with a microwave.”

“You lead a charmed life, Germ,” said Gregg.

“Hey,” said Bea. The others greeted her, including Germ. She made sure to return his hello. She felt slightly guilty she had assumed Mae had recruited him for some explosive-related purpose.

“Hiiii!” said Lori. She waved her arm.

“How’s it going, kid?” said Gregg.

“I downloaded a sound editor for my phone that lets me make the best monster sounds!” she said. “Wanna hear?”

“Dude you know it.”

She tapped at her phone, and something eldritch and horrible spilled from its tinny speaker. A drawn out roar and a squamous belch from something massive and hungry, dripping and organic and vast. It was followed by a throaty slurping that actually made Bea a little queasy.

“Dude,” said Gregg.

“I made that from the sound of a toilet flushing!” said Lori. “I think it would be good for this idea I had of a monster that lives in a river. It eats fishermen and that kind of thing.”

Gregg looked at Angus. “I told you she was pretty much adorable.”

Bea noticed from the corner of her eyes Selma had been standing off a bit. “Guys, this is Selma, she’s a friend of Mae’s.”

Gregg and Angus waved at her. “Hey,” said Angus. “I don’t suppose you have any idea what all this is about?”

Selma shrugged and tucked her hands into her hoodie. “Mae’s got me working on something, but she swore me to secrecy. Also I only know the little bit I’m responsible for, nothing beyond that.”

“That way if you’re ever tortured you can’t give away the entire operation,” said Germ.

“Heh, I gotta admit it’s a little exciting,” said Selma.

“Assuming it doesn’t all blow up in her face,” said Bea.

“It’s okay," said Germ. "I told Mae to keep all the stuff away from any open flames."

Bea’s eyes widened. “Wait, what did you just say?”

“Hi, everyone!” Mae burst through the door. She looked around. “Oh, wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people here. Like, even when this place was an actual business.”

“I had a birthday here once,” said Lori. “The pizza had ants on it and they ran out of syrup for the soda machine. The chairs were all sticky. Like. Every single one of them.”

“I remember the sticky seats,” said Germ. “They were perpetually sticky. Forever.”

As Mae approached the stage Bea caught up to her. “Mae, what the hell is going on?”

“All pertinent questions will be answered, Beabea.”

“Mae…”

Mae hopped up onto the stage.

“Hey! Helloooo! Everybody, like, gather around!” She waved her hands. “Nice. Cool. So. Um. Thanks for coming, everyone. Like, really. Man, I’m good at this. I bet I could form a gang. We could all rob a bank. Hey. Do any of you have bank robbing skills?”

“Mae,” Bea said.

“Ha ha,” said Mae. “Jokes. Just jokes. Ha.” She scratched the back of her head and then cleared her throat. 

“So like… I needed you all together because, uh, not all of you use a messenger program, but it’s really important that you know. Uh. Tomorrow I’m planning something. It’s kinda big. But that’s okay. Because I’ve been dealing with, uh, kinda big feelings okay?”

She wrung her hands together. “I’ve been back for less then a year and I had so much shit going on in my head. I’ve _been_ through a lot of shit. And one way or another, everyone in this room has helped me through it all. Even if you didn’t realize it at the time. And. Uh. Soon, we’re gonna be in a situation where we won’t be able to gather together in a single room like this.” The glance she cast at Angus and Gregg was quick and involuntary, like a reflexive twitch. Bea saw it all the same. “So. Before that happens. I need to… do something. To show all of you how important you are to me. And to… do something for you. So. Uh. Tomorrow, um, like around 7-ish? I’m gonna do something. And maybe it’s weird! And stupid! Maybe you don’t want it or won’t understand it. That’s… kind of why I’ve been keeping it a secret. Because even if you don’t approve, it’s still a thing I feel like I have to do. So. Just putting that out there. If you don’t want any part of it then that’s cool. Just don’t show up. Otherwise, um, 7-ish tomorrow at the Churchill. I don’t know how many of you remember, but that’s the date of the old Spring Parade. So. Um. That’s relevant. Okay? Okay! That’s it! Thanks everyone for coming!”

Mae hopped down from the stage. “No, seriously guys, that’s it. Thanks for coming.”

Everyone looked at each other and murmured. Mae moved to dodge but Bea was anticipating this. She tugged on Mae’s sleeve. “Mae? Promise me you’re not doing something rash?”

“I’ve got a plan in my head, Bea. Something that I want to do and I’m following it. Step by step. That’s really all I can say right now.”

Bea looked in her eyes. Then leaned away. “Okay,” she said.

She hadn’t even realized it, but everyone was looking at her. She suddenly became very self-conscious. She looked around at all the faces, then down at Mae. “I… uh, think you can be reckless sometimes, but I don’t think you’d want to hurt someone. By design, at least. So. Okay.”

“Works for me,” said Angus.

“Yeah, I’ll be there,” said Selma.

There was a chorus of assents.

“Ha ha,” said Mae. “Damn, Beabea. I don’t know if I should be insulted by this or super into it.”

_Same, really,_ Bea thought. “Go do whatever hellplan you got cooking, Maeday,” she said. “We’ll be waiting.”

~~~

_She’s probably not gonna hurt anyone, she’s probably not gonna hurt anyone, she’s probably not gonna hurt anyone, she’s probably not gonna—_

That was the litany going through Bea’s head as she filtered out of the Party Barn with everyone else. She did genuinely believe that Mae wouldn’t do anything terrible to anyone deliberately, but still there were a lot of questions that made her a bit antsy. She frowned and her hand twitched for a cigarette to hold. But before she could move for that, she felt a tug on her sleeve. She looked down and it was Lori.

“So. Um. It’s kind of late out and I live out by the tracks,” Lori said. She shifted from foot to foot and looked up hopefully. “Do you think. Uh. I could get a ride? Please?”

“I could use a lift home too,” said Mae. “It’s on the way!”

Bea brought her arms back to her side. “Okay. Okay. Everyone who lives on the way to the tracks, come with me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god I accidentally put up the copy of the file that I didn't proofread. Fixed now. That's what I get for posting late at night.


	7. I Got This Creeping Dread Thing Going On

“Good morning sweetie!”

“Wow, hey, morning kitten!”

Mae stumble-stepped down the stairs. “Bwuh?”

Her bleary senses resolved themselves until she could see her parents at the kitchen table, smell the coffee and eggs, hear the morning radio and the crinkle of newspaper.

“’Bwuh’ is right!” said her mother. “I don’t think I’ve seen you up and about this early since high school!”

“Where’s the fire?” said her father.

She held both her hands up as if she could hold back the coming of the day. “Too much sounds,” she said as she lurched towards the kitchen table. The morning sun assaulted her eyes and she could feel dry crusty drool on the corner of her mouth. She plopped herself onto a chair. Attempting the counter in this condition would be foolish and potentially suicidal. She sat hunched with her hands gripping the edge of the table and her eyes half-shut. She braced herself as if the world was coming at her at warp speed.

“Oog,” she said.

“Long day at the office?” said her father.

“Ha ha haaaa,” she said.

Her parents traded looks. They waited.

“How am I supposed to do this?” said Mae. “How does this work?”

“What do you mean?” said her mother.

“This! All… getting ready. In the morning. To do things in the day. How do people do this? You drink coffee, right? That’s a thing. I’m not into caffeine though. And… ugh. Other things? Forcing people to get up this early for work is… it’s real bad.”

Another look between her parents. “Work, kitten?” said her father.

Mae nodded and yawned. “I’m supposed to take over Gregg’s position at the Snack Falcon tomorrow. I figured I should probably wake up early starting today to get used to — whoa!”

Her mother pulled her into a hug, jostling a little coffee out of the mugs on the table. “Oh, Mae, that’s wonderful news!”

“You dislocated my arm! So I guess I’m awake now! I _guess_ that’s better than coffee!” Mae pulled away to no avail.

“I’m sorry, I just had no idea!”

Mae winced. “Oh. Yeah. Guess I forgot to tell you.”

“Really it’s almost as if I’m just talking to myself when I say communication is important to our relationship, hon!”

“Heh. I meant to say something but I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. Not until it was official. And it was only official yesterday.”

“That’s good, Mae,” said her father. “We’re both really proud of you.”

“Okay, um, it’s just minimum wage part-time at a convenience store. If you two keep acting like I’ve cured the cold or something I’m gonna start taking offense.” Mae kept her voice carefully even.

Her mother withdrew. “Ha ha. Sorry hon. You may not think it’s much but it is a load off our minds.”

“So you’ll be working mornings?”

“Yeah dad. Uh. Day shifts.”

“Then you can ride to work with me.”

“Uh. Today?”

“No, you goof. I’m taking a vacation day so I’ll be with your mother at the church for the big pretzel shindig.”

“Easter basket blessing, dear,” said her mother. 

“Right that. I meant starting tomorrow I could drive you to work, Mae. Might have to arrange your own transport back home.”

“That’s cool,” said Mae. “I don’t mind walking back.”

“This is so good,” said her mother. “You can keep going to therapy —”

“— Mom —”

“Nope. You know that’s a non-negotiable. And you can keep saving too. Weren’t you going with Bea on that little trip?”

“Yeah, I’m mostly all saved up for that already.” She may had been ignobly fired from Taco Buck but she had socked away what she could.

“Then you can start saving for the future.”

“Heh. Yeah. You make it sound so easy,” Mae said. She scratched the back of her head. Saving for the future. It sounded so vague and ephemeral. Like capturing fog in a net. What even would her future look like? Oh god.

“I know it seems intimidating, but just a little everyday can make a big difference!”

“Oh no, you’re starting to sound like a Charity Bearity book, which means I need to leave _immediately_.”

“Now that you’re out and about so early, what do you plan on doing with your day?” said her father.

A little trespassing. Light vandalism. Theft. Mae had a busy day scheduled. “Just gonna do my thing,” she said. "It’s Gregg and Angus’ last full day in Possum Springs, so I’m gonna drop in on them. Hug them so hard I snap their backs and they can’t leave me. That kind of thing.”

“Oh, honey, I know it’s sad to see friends leave,” said her mother.

“I’m coping, I’m coping. It’s cool. Just gotta make my time with ‘em count, right?”

Her mother hummed in agreement. Which secretly annoyed Mae. At, like, 16, parental approval was suspect. At 18 it was treated with a tolerated resignation. At 20, a college dropout, returned to her home, she could feel a touch of acid in her heart every time her parents marked a milestone. It felt _patronizing_. She knew neither of them meant it that way. It wasn’t about that. It was about how she felt about herself. She shook the thought away like a dusty cobweb. This was no time for wallowing in dumb shit.

“So, I’m out,” she said. “We’ll probably drop by the church for that pretzel buffet.”

“Looking forward to it! And it’s an Easter basket blessing!” her mother said as Mae walked out the door.

The morning sun was different from the afternoon sun. For one thing, it was right freaking there, peeking from the valley between the gently sloping mountains that surrounded Possum Spring. It was all up in her face. She had to shield her eyes just to look straight ahead. There should be an option to… not have a sun. Or she could get sunglasses. That’s a thing that could happen. The Snack Falcon had a little rotating rack of sunglasses. Nice, nice. How many sunglasses could she wear? Like, at the same time? Just stack one on top of the other. She should find it like, right now. No. No. She was going to work there. Plenty of time to satisfy her curiosity. She needed to pace herself, which was not really a Mae-thing to do, but she was going to have to learn, wasn’t she? Right. Break the record for most sunglasses worn another day.

~~~

Germ landed the front wheel of his bike on the cracked asphalt, bounced artfully on one wheel and then dropped back on both wheels. 

“Nice,” Mae said. “Doin’ stunts, huh?” She leaned against the Food Donkey.

“Shredding stunts,” Germ said. “I only shred. I don’t ‘do’ stunts.”

“Oh yeah, I keep forgetting.”

She watched as Germ did a wheelie — shredded a wheelie. It was pretty good until he lost his balance and landed in a heap on the broken parking lot.

“Geez, Germ! You okay?” Mae stood up straight and moved towards him.

“Ha ha, yeah it’s cool.” Germ got up and dusted himself off. “I’m super tough.”

“Yeah.”

“Watcha doing here anyway?” said Germ. “It’s cool to hang out but I thought you were gonna be busy.”

“Everything’s basically set up. Just gotta wait for the teens to do their thing. I promised them the good stuff only after they finished.”

“Okay.” Germ got back on his bike and jumped a pothole. She watched in silence.

“Hey Mae.”

“Yeah Germ?”

“Why you doing all this stuff?”

Mae looked up into the sky. She twitched her ear thoughtfully. Then she looked back down and Germ was off his bike, holding it upright while staring at her. Germ had a pretty unnerving stare. One that was difficult to read. Germ would make a really good poker player, Mae decided.

“I wanna burn some bridges,” Mae said.

Germ looked alarmed. “Uh, that sounds really dangerous and wrong.”

“Uggggh. Not literally. I mean. I wanna, like, leave some stuff behind.”

“Oh. Okay.” Germ got up on his bike.

“You know how there’s, like, all these statues everywhere? War memorials and mine bosses.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s like… all those things are meant to, like, pin down a moment in time, right? Like, to preserve people in a moment or something, so that they’d be remembered long after they’re dead. I want something like that.”

“You want a statue of yourself?”

“No. Like. Not of me. But of, like, an idea of me? Who I used to be. Who _we_ used to be. And if that happens, maybe that part of us gets left behind. My granddad told me a story once about this guy whose shadow was trying to kill him.”

“That’s awesome.”

“I know, right? And he tried to outrun his shadow, but he couldn’t because obviously you can’t. But he got like, a magic knife or something and when he stabbed the ground his shadow was on, it pinned the shadow to the ground. Like it was a sheet of paper. Then he could just walk away and leave his shadow behind. I feel like. I don’t know. We got these shadows. These things that keep chasing us. But, you know, they’re real problems. Except I don’t know shit about solving real problems. So maybe… when I’m doing this… even if it doesn’t help… it will feel like I’m doing something? That I’m not a complete useless tool?”

“Hm.” Germ said.

“Hm.” Said Mae.

“So, did he not cast a new shadow?” said Germ. “Like the next time he was in a light nothing would show up?”

Mae sighed. “I forget, dude. It was a long time ago. Mostly I just remembered the cool parts.”

“Fair,” said Germ. “The brain should only be filled with cool thoughts.”

“Ideally.” Mae looked past Germ into the distance. The vast parking lot. The chain link fence that ran so far she could almost imagine she could see it curve to match the very curve of the world. “Hey Germ, you ever think about what you’re gonna do?” She spoke as she continued to look far off, and her voice was slightly faint as if her body and mind were very far apart.

“I’m gonna ride my bike down a steep hill, then I’m gonna ride into the woods and find some rocks and break windows at the old glass factory.”

“I thought they were already broken.”

“There are always more windows to break at the old glass factory.”

Mae pursed her lips. “I guess that’s true. Back when I did that it always seemed like no matter how hard I looked, there would always be at least one more unbroken window there the next time I visited.”

“It’s a beautiful place. The glass factory is beautiful.”

“Yeah. But I meant, like, what do you plan for the future?”

“Uh. All those things I said I’ll do is gonna happen in the future. Can’t happen anywhere else.” Germ got off his bike and leaned it against the Food Donkey, between him and Mae.

“There was a lot of shit I didn’t know about growing up when I was a kid,” said Mae, her voice still faraway. “There’s still a lot that I don’t know. Sometimes it felt like everyone but me got a manual on how to grow up. Like, I’d look around and I’d see people who had their lives in order way, way better than I did and I felt like I had to have missed something along the way that they didn’t. But now I see Gregg, all getting ready to move out and be responsible and it’s like… I guess growing up is something you have to choose to do. Being responsible doesn’t just happen. You have to decide to be responsible. Because it’s worth it. And being with Angus makes it worth it to Gregg. He’s really changed.”

“Naw,” said Germ.

“Naw?” said Mae.

“Yeah. Gregg ain’t changed. D’you remember in high school, when he said he was gonna climb the school clock tower?”

“Oh yeah. Junior year.”

“Nothin’ stopped him from trying to get up there. Until his third try. When they called the cops.”

“Heh. Yeah.”

“When Gregg sees something he wants, he goes for it and does whatever it takes. Just this time that means being, like, responsible.”

“Geez. Maybe… maybe I’m just the screw up, then.”

“Naw.”

“Naw?”

“Yeah. You’re like him. Maybe the difference is you’re still looking for what you want is all.”

“I hope so. I hope it’s out there.” Mae heard a scrabbling sound behind her. She turned her head to look through the big windows of the Food Donkey. On the other side, a rat sniffed at the crumbling plaster and cobwebs that formed layers on the window sills. It stood on its hind legs and looked at Mae with an eye like pink marble. Mae smiled at it. It twitched its whiskers. She turned back to Germ. “You’re gonna be in town this evening, right?”

“Yeah, I’ll be there.”

“Cool.”

“Okay. I’m going to ride my bike down a steep hill now. Then I’m going to go into the woods and find rocks to throw through windows at the old glass factory.”

“Okay, Germ.”

“See you later.”

“Later.”

She watched him ride off. Once he was out of sight, she turned and walked towards town. As she passed by the Food Donkey, she gave an idle wave to the rats in the windows, their glassy feral eyes and twitching whiskers following her as she passed.

“Hey rat babies. Heading off. Come visit me in town some times. What, you too good to see your mother once in a while? Kids these days. No respect.”

~~~

“So delivery happens, uh, Tuesdays and Fridays? Or… yeah. That’s it. No, wait, that’s garbage days.” Gregg tapped his chin and looked up at the tile ceiling.

“Uh,” said Mae.

“Silence, I’m trying to remember how to do my job! Uh. Deliveries are, like… oh. I think there’s one like every day basically.”

“Basically every day?”

“Nearly.”

“Yeesh.”

“I’ll have you know I take pride in not being an excellent employee,” Gregg said.

“Hell yeah, screw the man.”

“Prrrrrretty much. No, but seriously there’s a truck every day delivering some damn thing or another. And you gotta put ‘em away.”

“Yes sir, sir.”

They stood in the middle of the Snack Falcon. When Mae had been walking past, Gregg caught her and insisted that he show her the ropes. Mae had insisted that Gregg get hit by a car. Gregg in turn insisted that _she_ get hit by car, then set on fire, then come into the store to get shown the ropes.

“Why are you even here?” said Mae. “This is like, literally your last full day in Possum Springs and you’re at work.”

“Because. It’s important that you know how to run this place. So there’s like, a broom closet? It’s got cleaning stuff. You can use them to clean.”

“Dude, we should write our names with floor cleaner and set fire to it. I always wanted to see my name written in fire.”

“Any other day that would be the best idea on the planet but we gotta focus, Mae,” said Gregg. “Let’s see…”

“Hey, ever think about getting, like, a wading pool and filling it with Snake-Ums?” Mae grabbed a box of the stuff. “It’d be like a ball pit. Except instead of big plastic balls it’s tiny corn puffs and if you put one in your mouth you won’t get the diseases. Sounds kinda good but also maybe it’d suck? Never know until you try.”

“Dude.”

“It’s like, I used to eat these by the freaking box when I was little and when you eat too much they’d shred the shit out of the roof of your mouth. Oh man. Do you think that would be like, torture? To get thrown into a tub full of Snake-Ums? Like they’d cut you up?”

“ _Dude_.”

“Dad told me how they used to have toys in the bottom of the box and he’d dig through the entire box just to get the toy. Now it’s all, like, word searches on the back. Ha. Joke’s on them. I don’t have to buy their dumb food to do a word search that’s right there on the box.”

“Yeah I do them a lot and —” Gregg shook his head. “I mean, _dude_.”

“And they’re so easy! I guess they’re meant for, like, 5 year-olds. Which I guess they might have a hard time with it. Heh. I just thought of a 5 year-old doing a crossword puzzle. Like the hard ones they only have in thick booklets. Oh man, this one lady at the church was a _machine_ at those —”

“Mae!”

Mae’s eyes snapped back to the present and she looked at Gregg. “Dude, no need to yell.”

“You’re not taking this seriously.”

“Since when did you care about something like that?”

“Since I realized that I’m like, leaving!”

Mae rolled her eyes. “Oh, wow. When did that major revelation hit you?”

“Like… I dunno? Recently? Come on, dude. I need to make sure you know how to do this job.”

“Man, what’s it even matter?”

Gregg looked at her with his mouth open. “It matters. I’m not gonna be here, okay? And I just gotta make sure… that… shit. That you’re like, gonna be okay. Okay?”

“Holy crap Gregg, I regret to inform you that I already got a mom.” Mae gave him a side-eyed look. “Dude, what is going on with you? You’re all serious.”

“It had to happen eventually.”

“Did it? Are we all doomed to become serious one day?”

“I don’t know, man.” Gregg looked up at the ceiling. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to get all weird.”

“It’s cool,” said Mae. “You know, I was kinda the same way when I was leaving for college.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I was like all worried and shit that you were gonna go crazy without me. Shouldn’t have, seeing as you’ve got Angus.”

“Heh heh. Were you like that? I didn’t even notice. I’m like, a total insensitive jerk.”

“Same, dude.”

“Naw, Mae. You’re good.”

“Hm. You think so?”

“Yeah.”

They stood unspeaking and whatever innocuous tune that was playing over the PA faded out and there was a moment of silence where the only sounds were buzzes. The buzz of the drink cooler. The buzz of the halogen lights. The soft thrum of the air conditioner.

“You know,” Mae said suddenly, “Me and Germ were talking earlier today about that time you tried to climb the clock tower in junior year.”

“Oh yeah. Good times.”

“Heh. You kept trying until you got arrested.”

“Naw dude, I tried even after that.”

Mae looked at him. “What?”

“After they let me go. I went back to school at, like, midnight.”

“What? I didn’t know about this! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It was different!” said Gregg. “Before it was just me, like, showing off. But after the principal called the cops on me, they sat on me to like, try to scare me. You know, the way they try to do the ‘scared straight’ — ha ha, straight — thing with kids. It made it personal. Like I had to do it for myself to prove that nobody gets to tell me what to do.”

“Holy crap, Gregg. Did you make it?” Mae’s eyes were wide.

“Heh. Naw. I fell. Gave myself a concussion and twisted the hell out my wrist. Didn’t break any bones though. Lucky.”

“Oh my god. I remember! You couldn’t hold a pencil for like a week!”

“But I tried it. I was curled up on the roof of the school rolling around in pain, but I tried. I didn’t let anyone stop me except me. And that was enough. Also it really did hurt.”

“You jerk! You told me you flipped off a cop and he put you in an arm lock!”

“Ha ha! Yeah. I wanted to sound tough. Not like an idiot who fell off stuff.”

“Jeez.”

Gregg chuckled softly again. Together they watched the slush machine churning away, plastic auger forever stirring the neon bright drinks.

“I’m gonna be okay, dude,” said Mae.

“Yeah dude, I know.”

“You ever, like, stick your hand in that slush machine to see if it’d break or rip your fingers off?”

“Totally,” said Gregg.

“What happened?”

“My hand got really cold.”

Mae laughed. Gregg joined.

~~~

She had stuck around for a couple hours. She watched Gregg work. He showed her the ropes and Mae actually paid attention. She was rather impressed with herself for that. But she had duties elsewhere, and after extracting Gregg’s promise that he’d be at the church later — 

“I’ll be there. I already told you I’d basically kill a man for those pretzels,” he had said.

— she left and continued her journey. Up Churchill and to the church. Cars crowded the parking lot and festive canopies provided shade from the sun as townsfolk set up portable ovens and ingredients and cooking tools on the green between the church and the graveyard. Eating next to a graveyard is pretty cool, in Mae’s opinion. But it was in broad daylight and with the full blessings of the church, which made it kind of lame to at the same time. It was a wash all around, really.

She spotted her mother, helping with set up. She waved at Mae and Mae waved back. Her mother didn’t ask her to pitch in because she knew better. The last time Mae was put in control of electric kitchen appliances and cooking oil, the school had to cancel home economic classes for a week while they replaced everything she had scorched.

So she walked on, and ran into Angus, who was standing on the sidewalk running past the church. He was looking up at the statue of Rubello.

“I think this is about the last place I’d expect to see you, dude,” Mae said as she walked up to him.

Angus gave her a slight smile. “That’s reasonable. Never actually been up here much at all.”

“It’s nice,” said Mae.

“Yeah. It is. I bet this is a good sleddin’ hill during the winter.”

“Totally was. They had to put up a rail because some kid rode his sled clear down to the Churchill steps and sailed directly into traffic on Towne Centre Avenue. He said it was the greatest experience of his life, which, yeah duh.”

“Nice.” Angus shifted on his feet.

“You just gonna lurk around the edge of the church until someone calls the cops or you wanna hang with me?” Mae said.

“You know, Gregg won’t stop screaming about these pretzels.”

“They’re very good pretzels, but won’t be ready for a while yet.”

“Okay, cool. Lead the way then.”

They crossed the street into the sparse cluster of trees on the the other side. As they walked, Mae spotted movement among the trees, and someone stepped out from under a low hanging branch, heavy with newly-sprouted leaves.

“Hey, Pastor K,” said Mae.

“Oh. Hello, Mae. Joining in on the festivities?” the pastor pushed the branch aside as she got clear, then dusted off her hands. She dressed conservatively and wore thick glasses that made her look like a librarian and out of place in the scraggly little woods. 

“Yeah. Me and some friends. Like Angus here.”

She gave him a slight smile and a nod. “Hello. You know, I don’t think I’ve met many of Mae’s friends.”

“We exist,” said Angus. “In defiance of reason and logic, people who are friends of Mae exist.”

Pastor K chuckled. Mae frowned.

“I see how it is,” she said.

“Oh, Mae. You are a sweetheart, but you can be trying sometimes,” said Pastor K.

“I’m a lot of things. I’m like, the ultimate person. What’re you doing out here and not at church?”

“I was just heading back. Just had to… reflect on some stuff. Will you be by?”

“Yeah, in a little while. With other friends. Who definitely exist.”

“Ha ha. Okay. Be careful out here.” Pastor K gave them a wave. They returned it and watched her go. Once she left their sight, Mae jumped over the bushes to where Pastor K had first emerged from.

“What’re you doing?” said Angus.

Mae waved him over. “Come look.”

Angus peered over the brush and saw that Mae was standing in a small clearing. She looked down at the ground, where, set on a tree stump, was a paper plate with a pretzel on it.

“She musta made one special,” said Mae.

“Did she forget her lunch?”

“No. She does this sometimes. Leave food out here. A guy we knew used to live here.”

“A guy? Here in the woods?”

“Yeah. Bruce. Lived out here when I first came back in the fall. Didn’t stick around long. City council at the time were total assholes to him.”

“Oh. That sucks. So… she leaves food out for him?”

“I mean. He’s like. Long gone.” Mae said. “I guess. Uh. She does it to, uh, remember him?”

“Mae, what happened to Bruce?”

Mae gave him a little shrug. “I just wanna believe he’s okay, is all. Off with his family. Being happy. Something like that, right?”

“Yeah,” said Angus. “It’s a good thing to believe.”

They continued on, and the tree line broke away to a cliff that overlooked the train tracks.

“Never been out here,” said Angus.

“Of course not.” Mae skipped down the slop and landed on the granite outcropping with both feet. “Only the roughest and toughest bad teens came out here.”

“I’m rough and tough.”

“But you’re not bad.”

“Dang. I can see that only the baddest teens lurked here as evidenced by that pentagram drawn there with a marker. And the curse words over there.”

“Yeah. Extremely badass, obviously.”

“Nice view though.” 

“Mhmm.”

They sat on the rock, which was still cool despite the spring sun, which was beginning its descent on the setting side of the sky. The light atop the water tower off in the distance blinked. A flock of geese in a V-formation honked their way towards the horizon. Despite being so close to town, the air was fresh here and the breeze was good.

Angus took a deep breath. “You know, there’s some things I’m gonna miss about this place.”

“Yeah,” said Mae. “It’s only mostly horrible.”

“Heh. Yeah.”

“You won’t be able to see the stars in Bright Harbor.”

“That’s very true.”

“Eh. They’ll still be there.”

“Be pretty alarming if they weren’t.”

Mae stood up. “Come on. By the time we get back, they should be getting started.”

“Roger that.”

By the time Mae and Angus returned, a crowd had gathered on the church green. There were canopies, once colorful now sun-faded to near-white pastels. There were a cluster of helium balloons bobbing from the hands of children. There was a DJ surrounded by a modest sound system, playing the mildest sort of church rock. Milling around underneath the canopies were a small crowd of Possum Springs locals, middle-aged to elderly.

“God,” said Mae. “Kind of a lame party, isn’t it?”

“You wanted us here,” said Angus.

“Yeah. Okay. Let’s go find everyone.”

~~~

Gregg had come prepared with a large plastic tub. He could see it now. He and Angus, a bin stuffed with pretzels between them, a little dipping thing for mustard, tearing down the road to their new life. It would be completely rad.

He had already filled up a quarter of the bin, heedless of the attention he drew in doing so. Screw it. This town was gonna be eating his dust in less than 24 hours. God. What a crazy thing to think. Thinking it literally made his heart beat faster. Weird how, like, a change in geography could do that. Like a 6-hour drive is the difference between despair and hope. He could almost believe that it was too easy except he and Angus had been working for years just to get to the point where they could make that 6-hour drive.

It was like… Angus had explained it to Gregg in a hyper-nerdy way that was so endearing that it actually stuck with him. It was like escape velocity, Angus had said. Most of the fuel on a rocket was used just fighting Earth’s gravity. It took so much work, but once it happened, things got easier. This was Angus and Gregg’s escape velocity. They were scorching through the atmosphere. And once they got clear, they’d be out among the stars. Somewhere that had more to offer than doomed minimum wage jobs, nasty looks whenever he was out with his own damn boyfriend and the slow death of a town the world had left behind. Yeah. Escape velocity. Fueled in part by pretzels.

“Leave some for the folks who actually make ‘em, bug.”

Gregg spun round. “’Ey caf’n,” he said around the pretzel he had stuck in his mouth. Man. He didn’t even remember _doing_ that. That’s how good they were. He worked his jaw and gagged the pretzel down. “Want one?”

“Sure.”

“I gotta fill up.”

“Gregg, there’s enough pretzels. You’ve collected enough pretzels.”

“But —”

“If we ate pretzels non-stop the entire trip, we would be too bloated and dehydrated to move our stuff, and we’re driving a rental that charges by the hour.”

Gregg pursed his lips. “We gotta be lean and hungry dudes, huh? Like wolves on the prowl.”

“Yup. That’s the best way to think about moving.”

“Geez. Alright. Okay. You know we gotta come back to Possum Springs like, every year for this, right? Like, you don’t understand. They do these pretzels so right here.”

“Hm.” Angus fished one out of Gregg’s bin and took a bite. “Mm. Stretchy and doughy and not bad at all.”

“Gotta get ‘em while we can,” said Gregg. “Oh! And they got lemonade! Fresh squeezed!”

“I can accept this.” Angus brought his free hand to the side of Gregg’s head and pressed a quick kiss on his forehead. “Come on. We gotta find Mae.”

“Yeah, okay.”

~~~

After the fifth Concerned Mother shot her a glare, Bea finally gave in and stubbed out her cigarette. Normally she would have taken all this disapprobation as justification to start chaining smokes purely out of spite, but spite took energy and Bea was running low on that at the moment. Plus cigarettes were expensive.

She had closed the Pickaxe early today. Early even for a Sunday, but whatever. No one was buying at the moment. It seemed like half the town was up here at the church. Which was a profoundly depressing thing because it turned out that half the town was a very small number indeed. Either through death or leaving, Possum Springs was losing bits of itself. She watched the people mill and socialize in a listless, agitated way. As if they all made the same observation and came to the same conclusion that she did, and were doing their best to ignore it. Like they were raising their voices to talk over the fire consuming them.

It was moments like these when she felt a particular claustrophobia. Even as she stood under the open spring sky she could feel on the threshold of her senses a closing in like she was being cocooned under a snow bank. Either die or leave. Each day longer she spent in Possum Springs felt like a growing, dreadful affirmation which one of those categories she fell into.

Screw it. She lit another cigarette and stalked off to the outskirts of the festivities. She didn’t even like pretzels.

She stopped short when a pretzel very suddenly imposed itself in front of her face.

“OOOoooOOOooo Beatrice! I am the holy spirit of pretzels and I have descended from pretzel heaven to ask why you are not partaking of my kin!”

Bea’s eyes darted to Mae, standing to the side and waving the pretzel in her hand. She huffed, blowing a long trail of smoke out of her snout. “Why does the pretzel god want me to devour pretzelkind?”

“Beatrice! It is our purpose in life!” said Mae in a deep voice. “We are molded and fried so that we maybe eaten. To a pretzel, sitting out in the open, not being torn apart by teeth, it is our version of hell!”

“Huh. Must be nice to know the purpose you were created for,” Bea said. “No uncertainty, no existential crisis. Just get eaten.”

“A pretzel’s life is pretty sweet, I won’t lie.”

Bea chuckled. “Wait, you said you came from heaven.”

“I did, mortal!”

“So if pretzel hell is not being eaten, then pretzel heaven is being eaten.”

“Uh, yeah? That makes sense!”

“So… did someone vomit you out?”

“It’s a sad tale, Beatrice! I was puked out to absolve all pretzels of their sins! All detailed in the religious texts of my people. Which is basically a single commandment: ‘thou shalt get ate the eff up,’ then a bunch of cool stories about holy pretzel wars which are way more metal than you’d think!”

“Hm. Enticing. But I’m not really in a pretzel mood right now.”

Mae withdrew the pretzel and took a bite from it. “Then you wanna go find the dudes?” she said in her normal voice. 

“Heh. Yeah, okay.” It was kind of weird how Mae could pull Bea out of a funk. Bea could understand the underlying theory of, like, having friends and how that can make someone feel not terrible, but having it put to practice and on _her_ was an uncanny thing akin to an out of body experience. It was something Bea almost wanted to resist purely out of spite because being contrary was a thing she had kind of fallen into. Then she realized that unlike a moment ago she _did_ have the energy for spite but no desire to act on it.

Crazy thing, friends. Bea took her cigarette, flicked it onto the ground and stepped on it as she followed Mae.

~~~

The four found one another, and as the day became evening they found Selma and Lori.

“Who were you talking to, Selma?” Mae said.

“Just some guys from my support group,” said Selma. They were sitting under the long shadow of Rubello. “We meet at the church on the weekly.”

“Oh, that’s… cool.”

“Yup. That’s my social circle,” Selma said with a bemused expression. “Karaoke at Miller’s, addiction support group at church.”

“And me!” said Mae.

“Heh, yeah.”

“Man. I should probably do karaoke.”

“That’d be cool. Are you even allowed in Millers? You’re not 21 yet.”

“I’m pretty sure I can still go in! They just can’t serve me alcohol.”

“Oh, okay. Once you’re old enough you kind of forget what you were and weren’t allowed to do. Yeah. That’d be cool.”

“Nice!” said Mae. “Just you wait. I’m gonna drag Bea with me and we’re gonna rock the place!”

“What?” said Bea, who hadn’t been listening.

“Heh heh, don’t you worry about it, Bea,” said Mae.

“That’s super reassuring,” said Bea. She returned to what she had been doing prior, which was watching Lori out the corner of her eye. Lori, who was sitting on the edge of the platform and looking out over the graveyard.

She wouldn’t have noticed the teen staring towards the graveyard unless Bea herself hadn’t been doing the same. She wondered if that would be grounds enough to strike up a conversation. Hey. We’re both looking at some goddamn graves. What do you think of that? 

_I think that’s a real shitty way to break the ice,_ Bea thought. 

It was weird to think that Mae had friends outside of herself, Angus and Gregg. It was also weird to feel weird about thinking that. This was a completely normal and healthy thing for Mae to do, all this branching out, meeting new people. Maybe it was the fact that it was normal and healthy and that Mae was doing it that made it weird to Bea. Which in turn made Bea feel kind of awful because that’s a weird thing to think is weird about a friend. Overall, Bea was feeling weird, and she didn’t want to feel that way. So she wanted to say _something_.

There was also the fact that Lori was 5 years younger. These days, Bea’s interaction with people that age mostly consisted of keeping an eye on them in the store so they didn’t shoplift.

After coming to the conclusion that this was a stupid way to behave, Bea stood up and sat next to Lori.

“So looking for your next filming location?” Bea said. That was terrible and she kind of wanted to die after saying it.

“No,” said Lori. She leaned forward and tilted her head to one side and then another as if trying to get a good angle. “I think I can see my mom’s grave from here. It’s like, way at the bottom of the hill there.”

The way things were going, Bea was seriously going to burn through her alloted weekly cigarette budget. Instead of lighting up, she forced herself to follow Lori’s gaze. Lori, meanwhile, started wringing her hands and breathing heavily.

“Oh geez why did I say that?” she said.

It was a terrible thing, having enough of a filter to know when you say something awful but not having enough of a filter to actually keep from saying it. It was something Bea could relate too. Another thing, apparently.

“My mom’s down at the bottom too,” she said.

Lori looked at her from the corner of her eye. “Oh. Really?”

“Yeah.”

They sat in silence.

“It’s not even a good place to film,” Lori said.

“Yeah?”

“It’s like, graveyards are all the way played out anyway. And the groundskeeper is cranky all the time. And besides it’s all like, not even scary, really. I mean it can be because I think you can make anything scary if you try but I mean, okay —”

Lori has gone down the rabbit hole, dragging Bea with her. 

At the foot of the steps before the statue, Angus designated himself keeper of the pretzel bin when it became clear that if Gregg were in charge of it for much longer, it would soon become a very empty bin.

“But they taste best when they’re hot!” said Gregg.

“I mean, you knew that going in so I feel like this isn’t the most revelatory observation you could make,” said Angus.

“But — oh, hey, it’s Germ.” Gregg pointed down the road and Angus could see Germ on a bike, pedaling hard up the hill. As he watched Germ, Angus lifted the bin over his head when Gregg made a desperate dive for it.

“Nice try.”

“Noooo.”

Germ threw his weight into the pedals getting himself up to the top of the hill. Mae waved him over and he stopped at the statue. He leaned heavily against his handlebars.

“Nice, Germ. You shredded that hill,” said Mae as she walked up to him.

“That wasn’t a stunt,” Germ said between panting. “It was just me riding.”

“Oh, okay. I think I’ll never get the hang of that.”

“So okay,” Germ said. “I don’t know if anyone up here has noticed yet.”

“Noticed what, dude?” said Gregg.

They became aware of raised voices from the church grounds. They heard variations on the theme of “oh my god”, “is that —” and “— it is!”

“Somebody left a giant duck in the middle of the road back in town?” Germ said.

Mae smiled. “Right. On. Schedule!”

Her friends traded looks, then they all followed Mae as she went down the hill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew. Been away longer than I intended, but life Did A Thing and I couldn't do any writing. Getting back into the swing of things now. Next chapter will be last, and then an epilogue. Hope you've enjoyed so far!


	8. I Will Breathe Fire

A crowd milled at the railing above the trolley tunnel overlooking Centre Avenue.

Smack in the middle of the road, that’s where Mallard P Bloomingro was. The road was mostly empty. What few cars were out driving that day had cautiously edged around the duck to get on with their lives. Employees from the Telezoft call center and the Fat Pocket pawn shop stood in front of their workplaces and watched with idle curiosity. So far no one had actually approached it. It was just… there. And baffling.

The setting sun cast the whole strange scene in a red-orange pall and threw long shadows over the duck’s blank face that gave it an ominous presence.

“Okay, Mae,” Bea said. “This is probably one of the more perplexing things I’ve seen you do.”

Mae and her friends had come down off of Churchill and were standing in an empty lot on the other side of the street. Mae was rubbing her hands together and looking very satisfied.

“Why, Beatrice. Whatever do you mean? I was with you all the entiiiiiiire time.”

Bea gave her a long, level look. It went on for quite a while. Mae eventually stopped rubbing her hands together, becoming more of a hand-wringing motion under Bea’s glare.

“Okay, okay. I mean, duh, I did it. Don’t look at me like that. It’s not like you just uncovered the crime of the century or whatever.”

Angus adjusted his glasses, as if the whole giant parade float duck thing could be an issue with his lenses being out of focus. “Mae, you dragged this thing half a block out from the building where it had been stored. Why and how?”

“The how was pretty easy. I went down into the trolley tunnel where a bunch of bored teens with nothing to do over the break hang out. I bribed ‘em to move Mallard down here! One of them even drives a truck, so once they got him down the elevator and into the alleyway it was just a matter of telling them to wait for the right time. They must have dragged him out here and ditched him in the middle of the road.”

“There’s a lot about that I really want to question you about, Mae, but first of all, what do you mean you ‘bribed’ these teens?” said Bea.

Mae looked up at her. There was an edge in her voice that had caught Mae’s attention. “Not actual cash. You know I’m socking it away for our trip, dude. Besides, teens exist in a tribal environment with a barter-based economy. I paid them in fireworks.”

Bea shook her head. “What?”

“Which I got from Germ, who I paid with all my video games.”

“Dude, there are some genuine classics in your collection!” said Gregg.

“Eh. I know, that’s how I managed to convince Germ to score me some killer fireworks.”

Gregg turned to Germ.

“I know people,” said Germ. “People with fireworks.”

“Mae, you can’t go around giving out fireworks,” said Bea.

“I’m not _giving_ it out, it’s in exchange for services rendered! It’s like the second most coveted teen currency second to booze, Bea! And not nearly as illegal.”

Bea put a hand to her temple and rubbed. “Alcohol is illegal until your 21. Fireworks without a permit are illegal in this state. _Period_.”

“Really?” said Mae.

“I find it hard to believe you didn’t know that already! How can I possibly know more about fireworks laws than you do?”

“Uh, because knowing about fireworks is way cooler than knowing about fireworks law? Obviously?” said Mae. “Although fireworks law is probably way cooler than normal law. Can you be a fireworks lawyer?”

“You handed explosives to random hormone-addled idiots,” said Bea. “Wonderful.”

“It wasn’t, like, my intention! I wanted to do other stuff with the fireworks but I needed people to do the grunt work for me. I still had a few though, so that works out.”

“Why didn’t you let us help you? Or at least tell us?” said Bea.

“I mean, obviously if I did then you’d all be accessories to crimes. I don’t know what the punishment is for stealing a parade float, but it’s probably on the books somewhere.”

“Aw, Mae, that’s not even an issue,” said Gregg.

“It kind of is, bug,” said Angus.

“Come on, dude, it’s Mae!”

“Rggh!” said Mae. “Don’t argue about this! Not over me. Look, it’s something I wanted… needed to do, okay? And I needed to do it for you guys! So I couldn’t have you help anyway!”

“Us?” said Gregg.

“Is this like that robot thing?” said Angus.

“No! I mean… kind of… but not just for you! For like, everyone! Here in Possum Springs!”

She looked around for support. And she did find it, for the most part. She was heartened to know that her friends by and large were not the type to ditch her the moment that she did something impulsive. She looked in their eyes and found… at worst, a lack of understanding. All except for Bea, who was not looking at her at all.

At some point she had lit a cigarette and was puffing on it furiously, chomping on the filter as she looked at the parade float. Looking at it with an expression like it had offended her somehow and she could stare lasers into it that would drill a hole through its exterior and set it on fire from within. She looked down at Mae. Her arms were crossed. Mae looked up and she felt the inside of her mouth go dry.

“Okay,” said Bea. “Explain.”

Mae let out a long breath. It was better than nothing.

“So, I can’t? I mean I will! Obviously! But my words are like, raw garbage?” Mae reached into her pants pocket and pulled out a folded-over sheet of paper. “So… I got like, words here to say.”

“Speech! Speech!” said Gregg.

“Uggggh shut up dude I’m nervous as it is! Uh. Selmers helped me write this…”

“Little bit, little bit,” said Selma.

“… so whatever parts of this don’t suck are basically due to her.”

The paper crinkled in Mae’s hands, she was gripping it so hard. When she realized this she loosened her hold and the paper was shaking as if it were in a storm. _She_ was shaking. She stared at the paper like it was an animal poised to strike. She tried to will away the sudden attack of nerves and dove into the words.

“So. Like. I needed to say goodbye to you dudes. Gregg and Angus, I mean. Obviously. Because you’re leaving. And that is super depressing —”

“Aw, Mae.”

“Can it Gregg! I’m trying to say goodbye to you! Geez! Rude!” Mae cleared her throat and returned to the paper. “And I get it. I get why you have to leave. Because this town sucks for you. It kind of sucks for all of us really. For like, different reasons. I feel like we all got screwed by this town. In one way or another. Like, all of our lives could have been different. Should have been better. I think we’re like… holy geez, I can’t even read my own handwriting.”

“It is kind of bad.”

“Thanks, Selmers. Uh… calculate? No… cashiers? I mean, heh, I’m one now but no… casualties! That’s what that word is! We’re all like casualties!”

She looked up at her friends, eyes wide with a sudden need for them to understand. “I did this because we’re all like casualties. Because we’re all, like, dead. Not literally, but our lives are over! Because nobody wants us! Like, if someone could build robots that would replace us at our jobs, they’d do it in a heartbeat! Until that happens, they just take our labor as cheaply as they can. And banks and stuff… they just want our money. And nobody wants _us_ so we might as well be dead! Like the guys on the war memorial! They got sent somewhere, and killed, and now they have a statue, and I want that for us! I want someone to remember our names because Possum Springs killed us! We can’t have lives here anymore and if we want to live, the best thing we can hope for is to live somewhere else.”

Mae gestured at Mallard with one hand. “So this is our memorial! For us… and… for all of us who couldn’t make it! Who died and we miss them! I want people from all over to know that we were here and we mattered! That we’re not… inconveniences or things, because I know what people think when they look at someone else and all they see is a thing. It’s not a good thing. So I want to shout our existence out. That we’re here. Sometimes I feel like Possum Springs might as well be on the moon. We could all vanish and nobody would care. So this is our memorial.” 

Mae’s arm fell to her side and she could feel the energy in her draining out. “It’s… I mean. I wish I could have done better. Because you’re all basically great. And if I could I’d burn your names into the sky. But… uh. This is pretty much the best I could do.”

She looked up from the paper and the expressions her friends wore were… difficult to read. If she were clinging to the edge of a cliff face, she would feel her grip slipping right about now. The moment was tenuous and it felt like the wrong word could send it down a bad direction. Which really sucked because if there was one thing Mae had in abundant supply for most of her life, it was the wrong words. So it was a good thing that Selma helped her with the words, but the day was going into evening and the sun was setting and if she stood here trembling for much longer it was going to be hard to read the words. Harder than it already was.

Mae cleared her throat again. “Because I think… I think…” It was really starting to get dark. Does the sun really set this fast or did some god decide now would be a rad time to prank her hard? Jury was out. She had good night vision, but it wasn’t good enough to read her little cramped letters scrawled on paper. She tried to rush it.

“Because when I think of you guys my brain goes in, like, a thousand different directions. I have a thousand different ways to describe all of you. You’re all like, so big in my life that I can’t even tell you and Gregg I swear to god if you laugh now I’m going to make you choke on those pretzels!”

“I didn’t!”

“You were going to! I could tell!”

“Aggggh fine!”

Angus squeezed Gregg’s shoulder. “Mae for the love of everything good please just ignore him.”

“Right. Okay. Uh. So. Where? Oh, right. So some of you know that… when I cam back home in the fall I kinda went through some intense shit. And… I guess it doesn’t actually matter if you know that or not, really. Ignore that, I guess.”

Mae’s ear twitched when she heard Bea attempt a surreptitious whispered conversation with Selma, who was on the other side of the group.

“Did she really write all this?”

Selma shrugged. “Eh, yeah. But she’s kind of meandering.”

“Oh my _god_ Bea,” said Mae.

“Sorry! Sorry. Keep going.”

“The important thing is,” Mae said, loud and firm to recapture everyone’s attention. “In one way or another, even if you didn’t realize it, you all were like, the glue that kept me from falling apart. And it’s something that I think about a lot. Like, it’s amazing that I can say that about another person, let alone more than one. That someone can, like, do something like that for me. Or anyone, really. But they can. And you did. And that makes you so important to me. And it makes me want to like, do something for you all. Like, if I could, I’d make you all into constellations or something. Put you in the sky so the whole damn world can see. How is it even decided, who does or doesn’t get to be a constellation? Is there like, a governing body? Um. Nevermind. Where was I?”

“Uhhh…” said Germ.

“Germ you are a good dude but I swear to god I’m going to start putting people in the dirt if they keep on interrupting me!” said Mae. She only gave him a quick glance. It looked like he was staring at her? Or past her? Whatever. She returned her attention to her speech and squinted. This was hard enough as it was.

“Constellation are rad. And they always have some kind of incredible story. And you guys qualify. Like. Seriously. I’m not exaggerating. If anything, you guys are bigger than constellations. I feel like if any one of you were put in the stars, your stories would be, like, too big for the sky to contain. I think that for every one of you. Like, I don’t give a shit if we’re tiny people on a tiny planet. We’re bigger than the stars. All the random mindless collisions of, like, atoms and shit that composes 99.99% of the whole goddamn universe doesn’t equal even a fraction of the things we care about and the troubles we’ve faced.” She felt her voice growing stronger. Her eyes weren’t straining nearly as much. The sun had slipped from view but she could still see the words in front of her. See them better than even just a moment ago. Which was weird but whatever.

“It doesn’t matter if, like, a star explodes or planets collide if there’s nobody around to care. Because we can care about each other makes us, like, enormous. There’s like, entire galaxies in the way we can see each other. And I want to hold onto that. No matter what. So, I mean, this goes out to Gregg and Angus tonight, obviously, but it’s something I’m saying to everyone here: regardless where we all end up in life, I want us all to, you know, keep in touch. I don’t want this to be some bullshit post-graduation ‘let’s all stay friends forever’ promise that never gets kept. This is something real that I want for all of us.”

At this, Mae felt her skin flush because wow that was lame and emotional and crap. She kind of wished she hadn’t yelled at Gregg before because now would absolutely be the time for him to interrupt and holy god she could seriously go for an interruption right now. And it wasn’t just all the touchy-feely garbage she was spewing, it was also the fact that like, half the people here hardly knew the other half and she was committing herself to being like, a conduit for everyone if she actually wanted what she said she wanted. Which she did. She was thankful it was dark because the rush of blood from saying this was making her super hot. Like, to the point of sweating. Her entire backside was actually feeling uncomfortably hot. Which was weird too, but… whatever.

On the other hand, it really was getting easier to read. Like, wicked easy. Easier than it should be. Which was probably a good enough reason to keep on going!

~~~

Behind Mae, Mallard was on fire.

It didn’t happen right away, no spontaneous mallard combustion. While sunlight still streamed from the edge of the horizon it wasn’t readily apparent aside from a thin coil of dark smoke. When the sun finally sank behind the buildings and the hills, an orange glow was visible from within Mallard’s open beak. When Bea first spotted it she was reminded of a documentary on glass blowing: a furnace with an open hatch that fire and sparks guttered out of. That was Mallard’s head in the deepening twilight.

What were parade floats even made of? Bea thought of this in a detached way even as the first gouts of fire left Mallard’s beak and spread over its face. Wood and plaster and paper mache. All of which had been old and mouldering and left to rot in some office building. She heard raised voices and alarm. The townspeople who had come to see the spectacle had grown… and retreated to a safer distance. Sitting in the middle of the road as it was, Mallard wasn’t much of a threat to the buildings on either side of the wide avenue. Bea could overhear more than a few people running off to find a phone to call in a firetruck. Which… good luck. After the town council started cutting back on public services the nearest fire station was at Briddle now, so Mallard had a good 15 minutes at least to burn.

Burn he did. The fire had engulfed his entire head now and he was this weird, glorious, terrible effigy, beak still visibly open mid-quack, flames curling up from it like some kind of demon created by a god who appreciated a good joke. Around her, Bea stole glances at Angus, Gregg, Germ, Selma and Lori and they were all transfixed. Partly by Mallard and partly by Mae, who still hadn’t realized what was going on behind her.

She stood in front of Mallard and it gave her a halo. An actual halo of flickering orange light, a sun’s corona that highlighted her and silhouetted her as she spoke. And the things she’d been saying were like, super endearing, Bea had to admit. It had been a long time since someone had compared her to a constellation.

And Mae was still going on, reading by the light of a fire she didn’t even know was raging behind her. It was a level of focus that Bea genuinely hadn’t thought Mae was capable of. She was going on about how important it was for everyone to keep in touch and so on. It all brought back to memory those years when she and Mae hadn’t talked to one another. All due to… some fight Bea could barely remember. It had been so long ago and the intervening years filled with too many actual life-changing events to keep room for some middle-school bullshit drama.

Subtracting the years where they hadn’t been friends, Bea found that she had known Mae for a far shorter period of time than she had assumed. Time and again it was circumstances that had brought the two together. Lumped together in scouts, reconnecting years later only because Bea had taken Casey’s place in the band. She didn’t know if that made her friendship with Mae, like, really fragile or actually pretty damn resilient. And like how, despite all of Bea’s barbs, the reality probably was that she didn’t know Mae nearly as well as she believed. And here was Mae right now, standing in front of a fire at night telling everyone how much she wanted to hold onto them all even as she was saying goodbye.

Which brought to mind the _other_ time Mae had been standing in front of a fire: drunken and incoherent and vomiting all her fears and insecurities into the night, into the woods. Right up until she was literally vomiting her tacos onto the ground. Mae right now was shaking. The paper in her hands shook with her and sometimes her voice got caught, was made tremulous until she found her courage again.

This was a different Mae. Still liable to do things like commandeer a fish fountain to assault innocent passers-by. But she was a Mae who had literally gone down into the underworld and then climbed back out. The experience was changing her. Even if she didn’t recognize it the people close to her could. If they hadn’t before, they certainly were now as she stood before a bonfire in the middle of town and told them how much she cared for them all.

It made Bea feel… well, there was a lot going on in the feelings department that she needed to unpack later. At the moment she was simply caught up in this phantasmagoric tableau. The fire had consumed over half of the duck now. Someone had made a token effort to take an extinguisher and spray a few clouds of suppressant, but to little effect.

 _Order a shipment of extinguishers and advertise them,_ said a little part of Bea that was constantly thinking about the business and never stopped and she kind of wished she could strangle that part of her brain at the moment.

As the fire absorbed more of the float, it grew larger and brighter and cast a surreal light over the entire town. Bea could see the war memorial beyond the Pickaxe and it was highlighted in a fantastical way that seemed to put a spark of awareness in its tarnished bronze eyes. Its bayonet gleaming oily as if slick with liquid. Years Bea had spent next to that statue and only now did it look anything like the person and the things it was meant to represent: the violence and the innocence lost and the youth wasted to war.

Memorials were meant to commemorate the things lost and wasted. It was an idea that came to Bea like a sunrise, and suddenly she could see much clearer what it was Mae had tried to accomplish by bringing Mallard out here. Bea shook her head to clear it and snap her from the trance. The crazy thing was that it _was_ a trance. Like she had been lulled to some sort of understanding that she wouldn’t have been able to come upon herself. When she turned her head she saw that her friends were… she guessed she must have looked a lot like them, the way the fire danced in their eyes and their mouths hung half-open as if they were staring at some baffling work of art that was dancing tantalizingly on the edge of understanding.

Were they thinking something similar to what Bea had been thinking, moments ago? Were they in their own heads, putting together their own personal version of whatever Bea had been putting together? Some private revelation that made all this make sense? The way Angus knitted his forehead in that deep thinking way he did seemed to suggest as much.

“Hey! I know I told you guys to be quiet but I kind of feel like you’re all going to sleep on me now! What the hell?” said Mae.

Her voice jolted all her friends into the present. Gregg’s eyes were practically rolling in their sockets before he spoke up.

“Sorry dude, this is a lot to take in!”

“Pretty good words, right?” Mae said.

“Yeah, and it was really slick how you got Mallard to light up at just the right moment.”

Mae looked at him like she was expecting some kind of prank. “Dude what are you —” Mae looked over her shoulder. Her eyes widened.

“Holy… holy what the shit! Mallard is on fire!”

“Uh, you mean that wasn’t planned?” said Angus.

“No it wasn’t planned! I don’t — that’s not — I mean… when did Mallard start being on fire?”

“Now who’s the one who’s asleep?” Bea said. The expression on Mae’s face told her that it was likely not the best time for sarcasm, but sometimes it just slipped out all habitual like. Mae’s mouth hung open and her eyes were wide and darting in every which direction.

“Is there a way to make it… not be on fire? Holy crap!” she said.

“Mae, it’s okay,” Bea said. “Someone’s called a fire truck. I’m sure they’ll be here in a few minutes.”

“The closest fire truck is in Briddle!”

“They were called a while ago.”

Mae put her hands to her head. “How did I not notice this?”

“You were busy telling us what great friends we were?” Bea said.

“Oh yes, the kind of friends that let me stand in front of a blazing fire without even letting me know!” The initial shock of discovering the fire must have worn off because Mae’s grumbling rather than being genuinely distressed. Still, Bea reached over and squeezed her shoulder softly.

“They were very good words though, Mae.”

Mae smiled sheepishly. “Heh. Yeah. Thanks. I must be getting all sentimental in my old age.”

“Yup.”

They fell into silence. Mae watched the fire now, along with the rest of them. By this point, the fire had consumed Mallard completely, from head down to the wheels, which were still standing, Bea noted with some pride. It wouldn’t be long before the fire burned out completely and the fire truck will have driven all the way out to Possum Springs just to douse an already extinguished pile of ash.

With Mallard fully engulfed, the fire was at its brightest, and its warm orange glow pushed back the boundaries of the night. It washed over the people, who stood and watched in that uncanny silent vigil that had seized Bea moments ago. They stared as if witness to something solemn, like this was a… a…

“It’s like a viking funeral,” said Germ.

Which was close, very close to what Bea thought. Everyone watched as if they were witnessing the passing of… _something_. Not a life or anything because it was a parade float for god sakes… but as it crumbled in on itself in a fiery heap there was the sense of something that was going away, something that was lost. As if Mallard was a stand-in for all the old shit that Possum Springs used to have, like the murals of miners striding beneath the earth or the statues to some past glory or storefronts with their windows dark like the hollow of a macerated skull. Like it wasn’t Mallard they were watching burn, but the things they had lost. Finally solidified into a single object and then destroyed before their eyes. A goodbye long in the making.

Or maybe it was all in Bea’s head and she was feeling particularly melancholic at the moment. Whatever the reason, the people of Possum Springs stood and watched and did not approach or flee.

The fire pulsed and in the wax and wane of its glow, in the contrast and shadow at the terminal edge of its blaze, Bea caught movement. A squirmy, verminous kind of movement. Bea looked up to the sills and the ledges of the buildings lining the street and saw them _move_ in an undulating way. The fire flickered, and ignited a swarm of pinprick points of light in the shifting mass. Eyes. _Rats._

They sat on their haunches or crawled over one another, pressed together on the narrow ledges unnoticed by the onlookers below. They stared down with beady gleaming eyes at the burning wreckage of Mallard. There was an uncanny otherworldliness to seeing animals so feral behaving like this, like sentinels along a watchtower. No one else seemed to notice them, no one else was looking up.

“Holy crap, my rat babies.”

Except for Mae.

She was staring up at the buildings, wide-eyed and mouth agape.

“They’re saying goodbye to their home,” she said in an awed whisper.

Which was one of those Mae things that Bea never really asked her to elaborate on, because the story would be too absurd and this was already more than absurd enough for Bea’s tastes. Instead, she simply accepted what was happening. It was weird and alarming and fiery and also kind of magical? The glow of the fire, the burning of a duck, spooky trances and the vigil of vermin. It was gonna be one of those things that would stick with her.

In the distance was the sound of a siren. Mallard was already an unrecognizable pile of smoldering wooden frames. A sizable bonfire but nothing compared to the raging duckferno of just a few minutes ago. In a great final gesture of surrender, what was left of the wheels fell inward on top of the ash pile with a hollow, wooden _thump_.

And as if that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, the ground underneath Mallard opened up. Without preamble or forewarning, the street below the float fell away to a black emptiness.

And Mallard vanished in a plume of fire like a tiny mushroom cloud. _Nuke Possum Springs,_ drifted a thought through Bea’s head.

Just… _whsssp_ accompanied by the sound of rocks crumbling and the street was blank, as if the fire had never been there at all, only the green-blue afterimage of it burned into the retinas of the townsfolk was evidence of its passing.

“What… the… hell…?” said Gregg.

“Oh man,” said Selma. “What just happened?”

“Sinkhole,” Bea said automatically. Her eyes were wide and she could feel the sting of smoke against them. “They put Mallard on top of a goddamned sinkhole.”

“Holy shit!” Mae said.

And with the vanishing of Mallard, the hold it had over the people broke. They might not have understood what to make of Mallard, but they were familiar with sinkholes and soon everyone surged further back, some retreating entirely. As Bea’s eyes readjusted to the normal level of light that Possum Springs at night possessed, she looked up at the buildings. There wasn’t a single rat to be seen. Not so much as the twitch of a tail. Bea shivered and wrapped her arms around herself despite the spring warmth.

The sinkhole was — and the residents of Possum Springs had plenty of examples in living memory to judge it by — a classic sinkhole. Really textbook. A nice, neat hole with excellent cleave all along the edges. And a deep one too. There was no sign of the fire it had just swallowed. Just gone.

Flashing lights strobed down the street. The Briddle Volunteer Firetruck rolled up just short of the yawning pit. Ready and eager to extinguish what turned out to be absolutely nothing.

~~~

“So that happened.” Gregg said.

“It did certainly happen,” said Angus.

“On a scale of things that happened, this was on that scale,” said Bea.

“What the hell just happened?” said Mae. She was holding her head in her hands and looking down.

“Black powder squib,” said Lori.

“What?”

They were in the Party Barn. The crowd had thinned after the sinkhole reminded them of the threat of sudden, spontaneous subterranean death that was as much a part of the town as watching Smelters games. 

They all sat on the stage, legs dangling over the edge.

“’Black powder squib’ is a good phrase,” Selma said. “It’s got good bounce. I’ll have to remember it.”

“It’s a good metal band name,” said Germ.

“No!” said Lori. “I got a bunch of black powder squibs for my Longest Night gift!”

“What is it with all these teens running around town with explosives?” said Angus.

“It’s not even a big explosive, just for special effects! I was gonna use it to pop the blood bag I put in the duck’s head!”

“Why did you put a blood bag in its head?” said Bea.

“Because it would look awesome! Blood all pouring out of its beak! But that and a timer is all I put inside and it shouldn’t have set a fire like that but it’s the only explanation!”

Mae groaned. Everyone looked at her. “Uh. What if. And I’m just saying. But what if. Someone put a buttload of firecrackers and sparklers and stuff in Mallard’s head too?”

Lori was agog. “Whaaaaaat?”

“I still had a bunch left over from what I used to bribe the teens! And I was thinking, like, I could use the leftovers to spell your names out in fire? I always wanted to do that!”

“That’s, uh, not a thing you can do with the fireworks I gave you,” said Germ.

“Okay, so I didn’t think it, like, _all_ the way through,” said Mae. “Mostly I just jammed Mallard with fireworks and figured it would, like, work out somehow? Oh god, no Lori don’t —”

Lori’s chest heaved and she was breathing loudly through her mouth.

Getting to his feet, Angus felt through his pockets. “Oh geez, do you need my inhaler? I got —”

Lori held her hand out and shook her head even as she spasmed. Eventually, she got her breathing back under her control. “I… think… that… would… do… it…”

Mae drummed her fingers together fretfully. “I am so sorry you guys. That got way more crazier than it should have.”

“Sorry?” said Gregg. “Mae, that was… incredible! The duck, the fire, everything! I can’t believe you did that!”

He nudged Mae hard with his shoulder and she looked up at him. “I can’t believe you did that for us, dude,” he said. “That was like, beautiful.”

“Discounting the property damage, it was actually kind of… poetic,” said Selma.

Mae let out a strangled kind of laugh. “Can’t believe you just said that.”

“When you think about it,” Angus said, “you uncovered a sinkhole in the middle of the busiest street in Possum Springs. You might have saved a life. Inadvertent as it was.”

Mae rubbed the back of her neck and looked to the side. “Oh. Yeah. Heh heh heh…” Then she stole a glance towards Bea, sitting beside her.

Bea gave her a narrow look. “So it looks like Mae Borowski gets away with it again,” she said levelly. Mae hunched her shoulders.

“Though given that it doesn’t look like anyone was actually hurt,” Bea went on, “I suppose I have to agree with Gregg. It was a very… it was a wonderful gesture, Mae.”

“People are going to be talking about it for years!” said Gregg.

Mae looked up at Bea hopefully.

“But don’t pull stuff like that again,” Bea said. She cracked a smile and nudged Mae.

“Yeah! I mean, how many parade floats are there left to burn in this town, ha ha…” said Mae.

“I have to admit it was flattering that you’d do all that stuff. Even the speech. Maybe especially the speech. I honestly didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Well… Selmers deserves a lot of credit.”

“Thanks, Mae, happy to be of service,” said Selma.

“I don’t think I can imagine a better final night in Possum Springs,” said Angus. “Thank you Mae. That was… weird and frightening and illegal and amazing all at once.”

“Here, here,” said Selma.

“Yeah, that was cool,” said Germ. “It was cool to be a part of.”

“We should probably exchange contact information right now,” Bea said.

“Sure,” said Selma.

They huddled together. Mae watched them and she smiled.

“We should head back to the apartment,” said Angus. “We gotta get up early to, uh, start our drive.”

“Yeah,” said Mae. “Okay.” She rocked on her feet as if not quite sure what to say as Gregg walked up to her.

“Too bad you didn’t die from smoke inhalation,” said Gregg.

Mae smiled. “Too bad you didn’t get eaten by rats.”

“Too bad you didn’t fall down a sinkhole and die.”

“Too bad you didn’t fall down a sinkhole and live, never to be found, forced to eat cave slugs until you choke on one too gooey to chew.”

They embraced each other.

Bea turned from where Selma was writing down her messenger handle when she heard a throat clearing behind her.

“Hey,” said Angus. “So. I’m gonna miss you. I don’t think I’ve said that yet. So I’m saying it now. To make it official.”

Bea smiled. “I shall record it in the minutes,” she said. “So it’s official.”

“Good meeting, everyone,” said Angus.

“Good meeting, everyone,” said Bea.

~~~

Once again, Bea ended up driving Selma, Lori and Mae home.

After dropping off Selma, Bea could hear Lori shifting in her seat.

“Soooo…” Lori said, fidgeting where she sat. “What… I mean, not that I didn’t appreciate the gesture. Although you did destroy my timer, but… what got you to decide to do all this stuff? With the duck?”

Mae leaned back. Across from her Bea stayed silent, but was listening intently.

“I don’t know really. It was kind of an impulse that I, like, fixated on. But I think there were a few inspirations that might have been swimming in my head. You remember when you vandalized the dudes in the trolley tunnel?”

“M-M-Mae!” said Lori.

“ _She_ did that?” said Bea.

“Oh, crap. Uh. I can’t believe I snitched.” Mae looked at Bea. “Uh. Forget you heard anything, Bea. Please?”

Bea rolled her eyes. She saw Lori’s wide eyes in the rear-view mirror. “Whatever. This place is falling apart anyway.”

Lori butted her head into the back of Mae’s seat.

“You said it was to like, show people that things weren’t okay, right?” said Mae.

“Ugh. Yeah?” said Lori.

“This was kind of like that.”

“But… but you got mad at me when I did it!”

Mae looked at Bea, but her expression made it clear she wasn’t gonna bail Mae out of this.

“Uh. Uh. It’s really all about the… uh… context?” Mae said.

Lori huffed angrily. “That… ooooooh! That is… such… b-b-bullshit!!!”

It couldn’t be helped. Bea exploded with laughter. She brought a shaky fist down on the steering wheel and laughed and laughed. For a moment it felt like she’d need to pull the car over, but she kept it under control until she was down to a string of choked giggles.

Mae smiled an uncertain kind of smile, and Lori was blushing and looking down at the floor.

“Eh heh heh. Sorry,” said Bea. “It’s just… sorry.” She let out a snort as she pulled up in front of Mae’s house.

“You’re gonna wake up early tomorrow, right?” she said out the window as Mae passed her.

“Yeah. Got work.”

“Right, like, I meant earlier than that?”

“Uh. I could try. Why?”

“So we can see the guys off to Bright Harbor?”

“Oh! Crap! Right, totally yeah!”

“Okay. Meet in front of their apartment building. Early.”

“Cool cool cool. Okay, Bea. Good night!”

“G’night.”

Bea watched Mae go through her front door. Then she pulled out into the street. “Alright, Lori, let’s get you home.”

~~~

When Mae walked through the front door, she saw her mother and father on the couch. She expected them to be upset. Instead her father stood and gave her a wry smile. Her mother got off the couch and swept her up in her arms.

“Mae, sweetie, there you are!”

“Hi mom. It’s… I’m okay! I was just out with my friends. You know. Last day and all.”

“Oh, I know honey. But I was sort of worried! What was all that craziness that was going on in the middle of the street?”

“You were there for that?”

Her father raised his eyebrow. “The whole town was there for that, kitten. Weirdest thing I ever saw, that old parade float just sitting there. And then it burst on fire! Never seen anything like it since some idiot tried to light a cigarette down in the mines back in the 80’s. Damn near burned his face off!”

“Oh, honey,” said her mother.

“Heh, well it was a crazy thing regardless. Think folks’ll be talking about this for a while!”

Mae looked at her father. “You’re in a good mood for someone who just saw like, a fire in the middle of town.”

Her father settled back into the couch. “Damndest thing, Mae. After that sinkhole opened up and people started leaving, got approached by some of the folks from work and we got to talking.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And… strangest thing. They were interested in organizing!”

Mae gasped. “Wait, seriously? No shit?”

“Mae!” her mother said.

“Yeah!” said her father. “Still a bit early to say it’ll lead anywhere but it seems like some of the guys have changed their tune! It was like… seeing that old parade float kind of…”

“… Made them think of the things they lost?” Mae said automatically.

“Yeah.”

“So… does that mean we’re gonna keep the house?” said Mae.

“Now, it’s way, way too early for us to say that,” said her father.

“But it’s more hope than we had even yesterday,” said her mother.

“Yeah. Hope is cool,” said Mae. “That’s… huh. That’s real cool.”

“Mae, honey, why are you so grimy?” said her mother.

“Oh, I guess I was closer to the fire than you guys. I didn’t even notice till now. Ha ha. I feel all gross.”

Her mother smiled. “Good gross or bad gross?”

“It’s definitely the good kind of gross.”

~~~

True friendship, Mae decided the next morning, was getting up at an ungodly hour for the sake of your friends. This was real sacrifice. She wanted to punch the sun right in its face. She made herself shake the cobwebs from her head. Angus would want to get an early start on the driving.

“Mae, honey!” Her mother called out as she came down the stairs.

“Yeah?”

“Gonna see your friend Gregg?”

“Yeah, gotta see him and Angus off. Then it’s off to work.”

Her mother smiled at her.

“Get on in the car, kitten,” her father said as he came down the stairs. “I’ll drop you off.”

“Okay, cool.”

“Take this with you.” Her mother stood up and pulled down a plastic container from the counter that was chock. Full. Of. Pretzels.

“Holy crap,” Mae said.

“I saw how much Gregg loved those pretzels.”

“You just like, bought his loyalty for life, mom.”

“Ha ha. It pays to have a few life debts to cash in, sweetie.”

“That is the best parenting advice. See you later, mom!”

~~~

As predicted, Gregg swore eternal fealty to her mom, which would be something she’d get a kick out of when Mae told her.

Gregg put the pretzels in the space between the driver seat and the passenger seat. Gregg, Angus and pretzels, driving towards destiny. Mae felt a stab of envy. That seemed like a fantastic idea.

She stood with Bea in the early morning light, watching Gregg and Angus go through a final checklist. Car engine idling, radio playing tinny music, reality settling in. Butterflies in Mae’s stomach. She stepped forward from Bea’s side and approached Angus.

“Okay, we got a full tank of gas… got all our stuff… got free food, so that’s good… whoa, hey Mae.” Angus looked down as Mae hugged him.

“I’m being the dudemisser,” she said.

“The what?”

Gregg looked up from the car. “Are you dudemissing without me, dude?”

“Yes,” Mae said. Angus settled one arm around her.

“Aw, dude, no fair!”

“Get the eff over here, idiot,” said Mae.

Gregg took a running jump and tackled the two with both arms outspread. “Oof!” said Mae. As he drew her in for a tighter hug, she looked up at Bea.

“Bea.”

“Don’t do this to me Mae,” said Bea.

“You must.”

Bea rolled her eyes and walked over. Angus pulled her in. “Oof,” she said and put her arms around them as well.

“You’re both gonna visit,” said Gregg.

“We’re gonna visit,” said Bea.

“Yeah,” said Angus.

“Mhmm,” said Mae. She closed her eyes and hugged tighter.

Then Angus lifted his arm and shifted and the moment was over. She stood back and watched him and Gregg. 

Right here, right now. She was going to lose. Her friends were going to leave. She was going to have to let go. And it hurt. But all that meant was that it had meant something. The time they spent together, the things they did. It all actually meant something. It wasn’t ephemeral, or insignificant. It was bigger than the night sky. And it was worth the pain. All of it.

“We’ll let you know as soon as we’re settled in,” said Angus.

“Yeah!” said Gregg.

Angus shuffled his feet, suddenly unsure.

“Get out of here already,” said Bea. “We got jobs to go to. Unlike you two slackers.”

“Ha ha, okay,” said Angus.

“You’re gonna visit!” said Gregg.

“Okay!” said Mae.

Finally, they got into the car. Gregg was waving at them, which meant he was stretched over Angus, who was trying to put the car in reverse. Angus tolerated this for a little while before palming Gregg’s face and pushing him back in his seat. Then Angus made Gregg put on his seatbelt. Then Angus waved at Mae and Bea.

And then he pulled the car out into the street.

Mae and Bea stood side by side, leaning slightly into each other.

Bea tilted her head down and spoke into Mae’s ear.

“We’re going to be okay,” she said.

“We’re going to be okay,” Mae repeated. Then she said it a third time. Like a magic spell.

They watched and waved and — because Gregg and Angus deserved it — they smiled.

**THE END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _oh my god this became so much longer than i originally intended_
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> Thank you to everyone who took the time to read all... this. When I first started I thought it would be, like, 4 chapters. 5 tops. It got away from me in a big way. But, I hope, ultimately to the good. I at least enjoyed writing it and I hope you enjoyed reading it.
> 
> Epilogue coming. Soon, hopefully.


	9. I Wish I Knew The Constellations Like You Did

**Epilogue**

“Riiiiight there.”

Mae pointed up into the sky, into the river of stars that streamed overhead in a world-encompassing arc.

“Right there?” said Bea.

“Right there.”

“You realize you are literally singling out one point of light in the middle of like, a billion points of light.”

“Agh! It’s like, the reddish-orange one! Kinda off to the side, a bit underneath the moon but kind of not.”

“Oh. Okay. I think I see it. It’s bright.”

“Right. So, that’s Mars. If you like, imagine a line from Mars to… that radio tower back from where we came, you can see the line runs through that kind of pale yellowish small point.”

“I see it.”

“Yeah. So that’s Mercury. Uh. I’m pretty sure that’s Mercury. It’s gotta be Mercury.”

“Let’s just say it’s Mercury.”

Mae lay sprawled on her back on the roof of Bea’s car. Bea sat on the hood and leaned against the windshield, her head next to Mae’s. Her eyes followed Mae’s finger as she pointed across the sky.

It was early. Early, early morning, with the bracing chill of the pre-dawn darkness. They had pulled the car off the main road and into an access road for some farmer’s corn field. It was still too early for the corn to grow high, so they were afforded a horizon-to-horizon view of the starry sky.

Bea breathed in a lungful of of fresh, dew-tinged air and cigarette smoke. It was kind of nice. In the privacy of her own head, she could admit that.

“So what do you do when you see the thing you want to see?” she said.

“Huh?” said Mae.

“Like. Okay. We saw Mercury. Now what?”

“Uh. I dunno. We look at it. It’s cool.”

“I suppose,” said Bea.

Mae radiated a sullen, put-upon silence.

The two lay still, eyes cast upward. They were somewhere between Bright Harbor and Deep Hollow County, an in-between space that was nothing but corn fields, little roadside antique shops and farmer’s stalls. To Bea it felt like they were on a raft out at sea, like she couldn’t be in a more remote place. Which was ironic since she was sure that almost anyone else would think the same of Possum Springs. Everywhere is somebody’s home and someone else’s nowhere. Bea snorted at the thought. Asinine poetic nonsense. She sat up.

“Whatever, let’s get back on the road,” she said.

“You awake this time?” said Mae.

“It was a one time thing.”

“You were asleep at the wheel! That’s not something that like, needs to be more than a one time thing! It only needs to happen once and boom we’re like, sailing off a bridge!”

“Yes thank you Mae I believe you’ve said all this before we pulled over,” Bea said through her teeth.

Mae turned herself over so she lay on her stomach. She looked at Bea.

“I don’t think we should leave yet.”

“For god sakes.”

“You look like an actual wreck. You should get some sleep.”

“We’re going to be late.”

“Oh my god that’s fine, Bea! Like, it’s not actually worth dying in a car crash trying to get to work on time!”

“You’re going to get fired you idiot!”

“No I’m not! Christine never checks to see if I’m actually on time and she’s not going to check today! She like, thinks I’m the best worker on the planet!”

“I can’t even begin to fathom the tortured mind that would actually believe that.”

“One that hired Gregg and kept him employed for multiple years,” said Mae.

Bea couldn’t help a snort of laughter. “Okay. Point. I guess it’s relative. But still.”

“Bea I will be _fine_. You are the opposite of fine. You’re going to work yourself until you’re like, a shredded pile of bloody meat. Can we please just chill?”

“Just chilling is what got us to this point in the first place.”

“No. You saying we just _have to_ drive from Bright Harbor at like 3 in the morning did that.”

“We wouldn’t have to if you didn’t insist we stay at Angus and Gregg’s for another night!”

“You wanted to stay too!” said Mae. “Ugh! Are you like, deliberately picking a fight or something?”

“Right, I wanted to. It had nothing to do with you and Gregg saying ‘don’t be laaaaaame Beatrice’ every 5 minutes.” Bea snapped her mouth shut and cringed. It was one thing to let their badgering rankle her. It was another to admit it out loud.

Mae didn’t say anything for a little while. Instead, she turned over again, so she was once more on her back. She cleared her throat. “Did we, uh, make you uncomfortable?”

“Can we please not talk about this?”

“But I wanna… I mean… okay. But regardless whatever dumb shit I might say or Gregg might say, you know that you are totally cool, right?”

Bea let out a long breath. “I don’t feel particularly cool, Mae.” She was tired, which felt terrible to admit after what she had just said, but laying there on the hood of her car really did seem like the best thing she could possibly do at the moment. She may have been laying on cold glass and metal still warm from the engine beneath it, but if she closed her eyes she could actually sleep and probably enjoy it.

“So… uh… what’s going on, Bea?” Mae said.

“Don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Come on. You’ve been kinda… I dunno. Off. Since, like, yesterday night. At least, I only noticed after Gregg and I came back from the tattoo shop.”

Bea looked down. Then she lay back and put her arms up behind her head, pillowing her as she looked up at the stars. She’d always been annoyed at people who acted cagey with their own feelings, so it’s no surprise that, like some terrible Greek tragedy, she ended up doing the same thing to Mae. It was like some kind of destiny thing probably. Become the thing that you hate.

That was a thing Bea thought about a lot, lately.

When the silence went on for a bit too long, when Mae started resigning herself to the idea that this was going to be one of _those_ conversations where it’s a non-conversation, Bea relented.

“Angus and I kind of got into a fight while you were out.”

“Oh. Wow,” said Mae. “I kind of thought you guys never fight.”

“Everybody fights sometimes.”

“I guess.”

“I’ve been having this weird recurring dream lately,” Bea said.

“Uh. Okay?” Mae said, clearly off-guard from the non-sequitor.

“It was this video game,” Bea said, “I was playing a video game. And it starts out as a blank screen but there’s a timer in the corner. Except the timer doesn’t countdown numbers, it counts down random symbols. But there’s this tone that starts whenever the timer is about to expire. You know, like in games where there’s a time limit and when it’s almost up it plays this tense jingle?”

“Gawd. That always makes me anxious.”

“Yeah. And in my nightmare I just know that when the timer expires, something terrible is going to happen. Like, something really bad. I have no idea what exactly because nightmares are vague like that but I remember, even when I was sleeping, this spike of fear at the idea of the timer expiring. To keep it from doing so these buttons randomly spawn into the game and you have to press them. But you have no idea how much time each button adds, because they’re all random symbols too, symbols with no meaning. And it takes a random amount of time to like, push the button. Like you have to maintain a connection to fully push the button. And as the game progresses more buttons spawn at a time, so you have to pick one button out of all of them and hope that that button is the one that adds enough time to the timer without taking too long to press.”

“Geez.”

“And I’m playing this game. Where I feel, like, actual terror at the idea of the timer running out, but the timer can’t be read, and it has to be given more time by these buttons that have no meaning, and that tense music is constantly playing.”

“Geez.”

“Whenever I wake up from these I’m basically a total wreck. Like, heart pumping, gasping for breath and it’s like, 2 in the morning. Rest of the day I feel like shit. And it’s like, dreams don’t mean anything but it’s hard not to find some kind of significance in that particular one. Like. I don’t know. There’s a countdown hanging over my head. And I don’t see it and even if I could I wouldn’t understand it but it’s counting down. And all I feel is like, dread. Because I’m still in Possum Springs. And every day I spend there just increases the probability that I’m going to die there. And just thinking that… just… it makes me want to…”

She trailed off before drawing in a sharp breath that comes out as more words.

“I feel like I’m swinging between two points and they’re not even extremes or anything. They’re just like… at one end I feel like I just want to be left alone and the other is me feeling like I want to… like I want to be killed.”

“Bea that’s… that’s not good.”

“No. It’s not super good. So. I guess Angus kind of picked up on it. And. I don’t know. Wanted to talk to me about it.”

“Ah,” Mae said.

The corner of Bea’s mouth twisted into a wry frown. She flicked her eyes up towards Mae. “That was a very knowing ‘ah,’” she said.

“I’m just glad I’m not the only person who’s stepped on the land mine of ‘Bea’s personal life’ and lost a limb over it.”

“Hmph. He hardly lost a limb.” Bea sighed, short, sharp and exasperated. “I know my life is a goddamn mess. I don’t need anyone to tell me this. I’m literally living it. I’m seeing it happen to me. I’m not an idiot.”

“Nobody’s saying you are, dude. We’re your friends and we want to help!”

“Maybe I’m just used to dealing with this shit on my own.”

“That’s, like, terrible.” Mae said, suddenly fierce. “You know where I’d be if I dealt with my problems on my own? Literally dead in the woods. Or a mineshaft. Somewhere out there.”

Bea didn’t have much to say to that. Instead, she kept looking up. She listened to the wind. Night insects chirping. The rustle of corn and the sound of her own breathing.

“It’s not even about, like, seeing it,” said Mae.

“What?”

“Planets and stars. I mean. It’s cool, but you’re right: there’s not much to do once you see them… but that’s not what it’s about. It’s like… all this stuff in the sky is so big. Like stars and stuff. It’s just so, so, so big. Stars so huge we literally can’t imagine them. But we can give them names. And tell how far they are. And what color they are and how old and if they have planets and all that kind of stuff. Like, something so much physically bigger than we can conceive, but we can give it properties and names and put them in constellations and have like, a history with them. All these stars we’re looking at right now, they’re the same stars that our ancestors saw. And they like, sailed the oceans looking at the same stars. We’re so small and far away, but we can snare the stars in, like, webs of meaning. And that’s something a star can’t do. Like, it can’t matter to itself, but it can matter to us. And that’s practically a super power. We can do shit like care about stars and care about each other, and stars can’t do that. So, you know, go ahead and suck it, star. I care. And that’s what makes us matter.”

“Hm, that’s nice, Mae.” 

“I might have cribbed some of it from Angus.”

“Hmph. Did you ever consider becoming an astronomer?”

Mae said nothing for a while. Then she put her arms up to the sky, her hands and outspread fingers silhouetted against the Milky Way. “Do you remember our science textbook in high school? There was this picture of an observatory that was in some mountain range. The Andes I think. And it was this picture of this white dome observatory, high and lonely on the side of a mountain and the photographer did that thing where the stars are doing the swirly thing in the night sky, like they’re taillights of cars stretched in a trail over a road.”

“Oh yeah, I remember that picture.”

“And it was all… lonely. And small. And there was like, a single pickup truck parked next to the entrance. And it made me think about the kind of person who was working there, all by themselves and surrounded by computers and stars and pictures of stars and graphs and nobody else. And for a little while there, like, yeah, that was my image of an ideal life. Sleep in the daytime, wake up at night, be surrounded by machines and look up at the stars.”

“Hm.”

“Wasn’t ever going to happen, obviously. I was terrible at math.”

Bea waved away an insect that buzzed near her eye.

“So… I can’t help but be curious,” said Mae.

“About what?”

“What’s an Angus and Bea fight look like?”

“Mostly short sentences. Spoken angrily but at normal speaking volume. Crossed arms and lots of silence.”

“Yeesh, you guys even fight boring.”

“I save the shouting matches for you.”

“Aw. My shoutfriend.”

“I feel like… Possum Springs is going to kill me,” said Bea.

“Smoking’s gonna kill you,” said Mae.

“I smoke because I live in Possum Springs.”

“… I’ve been reliably told that our town goes for the lungs.”

“Yeah. That sounds right. Like the people who drowned in the floods. Or Lori.”

“Wait, Lori?”

“Yeah. You haven’t noticed she has respiratory problems? Like Angus?”

“Like, breathing? Yeah, obviously.”

“She lives by the train tracks. Lots of diesel pollution. Gives people all sorts of breathing problems. Especially if they grow up there.”

“I had no idea,” Mae said after a pause. “Goddamn our town sucks, huh?”

“Yuuuuuuup. I mean. I don’t know definitively, I’m not a doctor who examined her, but she fits the profile pretty well.”

Gradually, subtly, the sky was purpling. Bea only noticed it as they fell into contemplative silence. The sun would be up soon. The stars were already fading.

“So…” she said. “Um.”

“Um,” said Mae.

“So like, me and Angus argued about, like, my future. All that kind of thing. And. Even though it was kind of a fight, he did give me something. Before we left.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Another beat of silence.

“Are you… going to tell me what that is? Or were you just bragging?” said Mae.

“It’s a USB stick.”

“Okay.”

“And on it is… a spreadsheet.”

“A spreadsheet,” said Mae. “That’s cool. Spreadsheets are cool. That was a lie. I was lying. Spreadsheets are very much the exact opposite of that.”

“It’s the one he used to figure out how much time and money he and Gregg needed in order to move to Bright Harbor.”

Bea waited for Mae to think about this. It took a moment.

“Oh,” said Mae.

“I was thinking maybe we could use it. You and me.”

“You and me?”

“It was kind of designed for two people.”

“You and me and… to… uh… Bright Harbor?” Mae’s voice creaked as if straining against something.

“And, as you say, to Bright Harbor, yeah.”

“Wow,” Mae croaked. “Oh. Wow.”

“I can’t die in Possum Springs, Mae. I can’t be stuck there. I just… I can’t.” The words spilled out of Bea and it was like weights falling from her body. Just acknowledging leaving Possum Springs as a possibility made her feel as if she were going to float up into the sky.

“Okay. Wow. Okay.” Mae was wide-eyed and staring, looking up at stars evanescing into the morning light.

“And… I don’t know how you feel about leaving. Which is why I’m telling you this. But I think we could make it. If we do this together. Um. I mean. I know it’s asking a hell of a lot. Like… you gave up college to go back to Possum Springs… but if you wanted, I think we could… we could… make it. Outside.”

“Bea. I didn’t… I came back because I had to. That doesn’t mean I can’t leave. Especially if it’s with you.”

“Okay. So… is that a yes?”

“Yeah,” said Mae. “It is. That’s a really cool spreadsheet.”

“Yeah. Really cool.”

“I want this,” said Mae. “But… you sure you’re gonna be able to put up with me? I can be a shitshow.”

“It’s not like you have a monopoly on that,” said Bea. “I don’t know. I mean, people work out problems with each other all the time, right? I feel like if that wasn’t the case we would have all killed each other a thousand years ago.”

“If we as a people can make it to the 21st century, then Mae Borowski and Bea Santello can… work? Live?”

“A roommate situation would be a part of the plan, yeah. I mean, in Bright Harbor. You live rent free right now. No lease to deal with. But yeah. Ultimately.”

“Then we can live together!”

“Yup.”

“Yeah, okay. But… what about the… uh… the Pickaxe? And your dad? And… all that?”

“I mean, that situation is never going to stop being that situation. Like, there’s no endgame scenario there. Just me working in the Pickaxe forever or until we lose everything. And I would rather die than let that happen to me. I don’t know. I put money away in a savings account, and it’s not much but it’s something. And if we work together it’s, like, more than something. Could be everything. And my dad… I mean… he has to pick himself up at some point. Maybe… knowing that I’m leaving will be the thing we both need.”

Mae’s lips curled, like she was sampling wine, testing its taste. “What about… college?”

“What about college? It’s not gonna happen. Or at least, if it is gonna happen it’s gonna be online classes or something.”

This was greeted with silence. Bea got this feeling like she had to justify her plans to Mae, which, fair enough.

“I think I could… open a business in Bright Harbor,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I have experience. This time, a business that I actually want, you know? Maybe sell something other than the hammers and nails and lengths of wood that are used to board up all the other failed businesses in Possum Springs."

“That’s a growth industry!”

“Yup. Pretty terrible.”

“If anyone could make that work, it’s you,” said Mae.

“Mm.”

“I mean, you’re smart and tough and you put up with so much shit already. Might as well… uh… keep doing that except in a way that… profits you? Wow, that sounded way less jerky in my head. Sorry.”

“Eh,” said Bea. “It’s apt enough.” Which it was, she thought. Mae cared in a way that didn’t really involve being tactful and Bea was okay with that. Bea cared in a way that didn’t really involve being nice. It seemed to balance out. There was still genuine care underneath it all.

“You know,” Bea said, “I was afraid that we were, like, co-dependent.”

“What does that mean?”

“That we need each other, and not in a healthy way.”

“Oh. Are we like that?”

“I’m kinda resistant to the idea of anyone needing anyone, honestly. But that’s probably my own, like, complex or whatever. Because maybe we do need each other, but maybe it’s actually good? The thing is, I don’t think I’m a particularly good person —”

“Wait, what? Bea, that’s —”

“Nope. Let me finish. This isn’t me fishing for a compliment. It’s just how I feel. I put you down sometimes. I act shitty. But I think that… maybe I’m like that because… I feel like I can’t do anything right. Or I’m no good at anything. And I haven’t felt like anyone’s had my back since my mom died. I mean, Angus was in a relationship so I don’t like to third wheel him, Jackie’s always been kind of a big picture person. I kind of felt like I’ve been on my own and it’s hard to deal with shit when you feel like that, so sometimes it’s almost like I’m not trying, or just making things worse.”

The sun was coming up now, to the point where its early rays were getting into Bea’s eyes. She squinted. Some farmer’s probably coming out at the crack of dawn, wondering why two women had parked their car in his field. She sat up.

“I think what I need is someone who I know is going to have my back. And, I mean, this is probably obvious. Like, it’s basic friend stuff. But to me it feels like this incredible realization? On account of I’m so wrapped up in this ideal of needing no one that the fact that I need someone feels like some tragic aristotelian anagnorisis, you know?”

“Uh. Yeah! Sure!”

“Uh huh,” said Bea.

“Oh, shut up! I got the gist of it! I will totally have your back and kick the ass of any jackhole dumb enough to give you any trouble!” Mae stood up on the car, legs wide, hands on hips, the picture of heroic confidence. Then she looked down at Bea, who had her arms crossed and brow arched at the sight of her friend standing on her damn car like the Colossus of Rhodes and Mae suddenly looked sheepish. She jumped down onto the ground.

“I’m still kind of worried. About, like, screwing it up with you,” said Mae.

“Let’s just promise to work shit out instead of letting it build up until we explode on each other. And worst comes to worst, I don’t think I can be angry at you forever.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Feeling up for driving?”

“Yeah.” Bea stretched her arms and rolled her neck and shoulders. Despite not having actually slept, she felt rested. “Let’s go.”

“Yeah, before some farmer abducts us and chains us up in his butcher basement.”

They took their seats in the car and pulled back onto the road. Even as the day started, they were still the only car going towards the mountains.

It was some time before Bea realized that Mae had been murmuring to herself. She was repeating something, over and over. Like a mantra.

“What are you whispering?” she said.

Mae turned from the window, eyes wide and embarrassed. “Oh. Uh… didn’t realize I was saying it out loud.”

“Well you were. What was it?”

“Um. Gregg told me once that the thing that kept him working, even when he hated it, was this chant. It was like: ‘Gregg, Angus, Bright Harbor,’ just over and over.”

“Hm.”

Mae wrung her hands. “Yeah. So. That was what I was saying. You, me, Bright Harbor.”

“You, me, Bright Harbor,” said Bea.

“Yeah.”

It had a rhythm to it. Dit-dot dit-dit-dot. Bea repeated it in her head and drummed her fingers on the wheel in time to it. She was inordinately glad that Mae had told her this. It made their plan feel real in a way that it hadn’t. Not real in the way that numbers and timetables could make it, but real in the sense of two people working towards something that was in reach if they were willing to stretch towards it. Real like a new home.

The pessimist inside her couldn’t help but conjure scenarios where they’d fall short, but even then it’d be alright. As long as they had each other’s back, it could still work. It would still be home enough.

They drove past corn fields and wound their way into the mountains, Bea’s fingers tapping on the wheel the whole way, in time with the chant. 

Mae. 

Bea.

Bright Harbor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's a wrap.
> 
> Thank you everyone for reading.
> 
> Let me know if you enjoyed it!


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